Key Trump administration officials have been confronted at restaurants. Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) urged protesters to hound Trump officials at restaurants, gas stations, or department stores.
Progressive pundits and the liberal media almost daily think up new ways of characterizing President Trump as a Nazi, fascist, tyrant, or buffoon. Celebrities openly fantasize about doing harm to Trump.
What is behind the unprecedented furor?
Just as Barack Obama was not a centrist, neither is Trump. Obama promised to fundamentally transform the United States. Trump pledged to do the same and more — but in the exact opposite direction.
The Trump agenda enrages the Left in much the same manner that Obamacare, the Obama tax hikes, Obama’s liberal Supreme Court picks, and the Iran nuclear deal goaded the Right.
Yet the current progressive meltdown is about more than just political differences. The outrage is mostly about power — or rather, the utter and unexpected loss of it.
In 2009, Obama seemed to usher in a progressive revolution for a generation.
Democrats controlled the House. They had a supermajority in the Senate. Obama had a chance to ensure a liberal majority on the Supreme Court for years.
Democrats had gained on Republicans at the state and local levels. The media, universities, professional sports, Hollywood, and popular culture were all solidly left-wing.
A Republican had not won 51 percent of the popular vote in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush’s 1988 defeat of Democrat Michael Dukakis. Before 2016, Republicans had lost the popular vote in five of the previous six presidential elections.
And then visions of a generation of progressive grandeur abruptly vanished.
Obama left behind a polarized nation. Democrats lost both the House and the Senate. During Obama’s tenure, Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the state level.
Presumptive winner Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 presidential election.
Foolishly, Clinton tried to ensure a landslide victory by wasting precious campaign time in unwinnable red states such as Arizona and Georgia. Meanwhile, she too often neglected winnable purple states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all of which Obama had won in 2008 and 2012. Clinton apparently forgot that the Electoral College, not the popular vote, elects a president.
After his election, President Trump did not implode as predicted. By following the Obama precedent of relying on executive orders, Trump began recalibrating everything from immigration enforcement to energy development.
Abroad, Trump did what no other Republican president would have dared, bombing ISIS into submission, canceling the Iran deal, seeking to denuclearize North Korea, pulling out of the Paris climate accord, and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The U.S. economy took off with new tax cuts and deregulation. Radical improvement in unemployment, economic growth, and oil and natural-gas production created new consumer and business confidence.
Yet the right knew that Obama’s agendas would do as much damage to the Democrats as it does to the country and will prove politically beneficial. The left can’t run the risk of allowing Trump to carry out his agenda and succeed.
The left is in their violent funk because they have no idea how to combat the utter rejection of their failed agenda.