Can’t stop, won’t stop

No Kings III kept the ball rolling, despite all attempts to nudge it into the gutter

Why keep having No Kings? The reasons may be obvious to you, but not to the folks at the New York Times like Jeremy W. Peters:

Organizers hoped Saturday’s protests would turn out to be the largest yet. But as the marchers tried to fulfill that promise, it remained an open question whether another big turnout would be enough to influence the course of the nation’s politics. Can the protests harness that energy and turn it into victories in the November midterm elections? How can they avoid a primal scream that fades into a whimper?

I imagine some among the eight million or so No Kings attendees on Saturday also wondered how to “harness that energy and turn it into victories in the November midterm elections,” and are currently looking for (and finding, it’s not hard) campaigns or candidates or mutual aid or other ways to do so. But Peters didn’t talk to anyone like that, at least not anyone who wound up in the story.

He did hear from some participants who were fine with the multifocal nature of these massive events and thought it made sense because the administration was screwing so many different kinds of people that, as one of them said, “It’s become apparent that ‘No Kings’ means ‘all of the above.’”

You can imagine Peters nodding dutifully through those people until he got to other interviewees who told him things like: Sure this movement may be huge but it “doesn’t necessarily make the other pieces needed for building a political movement” and the events are actually more “like collective therapy” than anything else and that surveys show attendees are “predominantly female, college educated and middle-aged” so you know some readers and many Times editors will take that as a cue to dismiss them, however many there may be in the streets, as femmy, neurotic, pointy-headed old-hippie Not Real Americans. (Also “close to 90 percent were white,” so they’re probably racist too. Hey, did you know a lot of Latinos voted for Trump? You certainly do if you read the Times!)

In a separate Times article, filed after the protests, Thomas Fuller portrays the scale and styles of the events, but also tells readers that “with the midterm elections months away, the protests are being scrutinized for whether they could translate to any political shifts.” (And you want proof of that scrutiny, you can read Peters’ story!)

Also, Fuller reports, while “dozens more No Kings events were held in Republican-dominated or battleground states on Saturday than during the last marches in October, according to the organizers... overall the shift was marginal: Forty-nine percent of events were held in red or battleground states on Saturday, compared with 48 percent in October, according to data provided by the organizers.” I wonder how many readers were surprised to learn that so many anti-Trump rallies had sprung up in Trump jurisdictions, and wondered why the word “marginal” belonged in that context at all.

Oh, and Fuller finds a place for one of the “skeptics” of No Kings of which he tells us there is “no shortage” — Cass Rutledge, described as “a first-year law student at the University of Mississippi,” and revealed by non-Times-reporters to also be chairman of the Ole Miss College Republicans. (Rutledge tells Times readers that Trump won the 2024 election in a “landslide,” which Fuller does not challenge or annotate; wonder if he asked Rutledge about the size of Trump’s victory in 2020.)

We like to make fun of the Times, and why not, they suck, and comprise (along with most of the Prestige Press) one part of a pincer movement targeting Trump’s opposition with straight-up rightwing propaganda outlets — such as the Washington Times, which tells its readers “No Kings protests reportedly funded by socialist, communist groups.” Nutshell: SOROS! Also: “Fox News Digital identified socialist and communist organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman with Communist China ties, are sending members to the protests.” An Armand Hammer Commie! One might just as easily call Donald Trump an American businessman with Communist China ties as well. (I wonder if the Times and the rest actually resent having to cover No Kings because it’s too big to ignore? They don’t seem to mind when Trump forces them to give credence to his bullshit.)

They try, oh, how they try. But none of that is working. The events keep getting bigger. Trump’s approval keeps going lower. Democrats keep winning special elections. (Last week Democrat Emily Gregory won a Florida statehouse seat in District 87 — which Trump carried by 19 points in 2024 AND WHICH CONTAINS MAR-A-LAGO.) Despite Tubby’s flailing, all the energy is surging against him.

Things could go wrong. The Republicans are trying to steal the midterms. Trump and his goon squad might create a “terrorist incident” to help that along or enact some other kind of autogolpe. But to say that the continuing, highly visible success of No Kings isn’t meaningful — as a bandwagoning campaign, as an email harvest, and as a tonic for the troops — is ridiculous.

Me, I went in the morning down to the square between Baltimore City Hall and the War Memorial, which was packed. I heard some speeches and some chants. (Did I imagine that some speakers who led chants said “No Pimps” instead of “No Kings”?) I heard the Rapid Response Choir lead attendees in protest singalongs (“Lift up your eye Lift up your eye! Don’t you despair Don’t you despair!”). I saw a crowd that did indeed, as the Times’ survey source suggested, contain a lot of oldsters, women, and educated granola people who would not be out of place at a Sweet Honey In The Rock show — but also a lot of young people, who had the saltiest signs (like the boonie-hatted guy carrying one that read “SAVE A LIFE/ KILL A NAZI/ FRAG YOUR C.O.”) and many just plain normies, often with kids and dogs. It was a nice day, sure, but a little cold — these people could have done something indoors, or gone to the Zoo or the Harbor or the Orioles game. The thing had something more than passing interest for them.

That was also the case at the D.C. rally, to which I arrived late; lots of people with signs were leaving as I got there and the stage had been given over to the failed-open-mic types (like one young lady who, in the midst of a meander about Love, announced a song and then announced that she had forgotten the words). But it was still a cool scene. Further down the Mall, people were strolling and lounging, sometimes with signs, and sometimes flying kites (the Blossom Kite Festival was the same day); protest, it seemed, was melting back into real life and, past experience suggests, would return the same way. Expect us!