Should-Read: Francis Wilkinson: Women Delivered a Body Blow to Trump’s Populism

Should-Read: Francis Wilkinson: Women Delivered a Body Blow to Trump’s Populism: “If Trump embodies the people, who were those millions of bodies insisting that he doesn’t represent them?…

…The White House can’t get over the disparity between Donald Trump’s modest inaugural crowd on Friday and the massive protests that took place the next day. But what matters most is not how the numbers of marchers across America surpassed the numbers celebrating the inaugural. What matters, now and over the long term, is how those protesting bodies challenged the words of Trump’s inaugural address, and neutered them. Millions of Americans took to the streets for a “Women’s March” that, in the end, had less to do with sexual politics than with a broad defiance of Trump’s new order. They turned out in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Washington D.C., but also in places like Boise, Idaho, and Anchorage, Alaska. Trump being Trump, he probably would’ve been unnerved by the size of the protests regardless: Size is a simple handle for an unsubtle mind. But White House strategist Steve Bannon and the shrewder members of the Trump team surely grasped that the protests had just obliterated an inaugural address that was less than 24 hours old.

In his broken beer bottle of a speech, Trump jabbed at the “establishment” he had defeated…. Like countless populists before him, Trump has set himself up as the representative, voice and will of “the people.”… The number of people marching against Trump on Saturday appears to have been north of 2 million…