Anti-Trump Resistance ‘Burned Out on Outrage,’ NYT Warns

The anti-Trump resistance of the Left is running out of steam ahead of the 2024 presidential election due to “crisis fatigue,” according to the New York Times.

The NYT reported Monday that the anti-Trump left is “exhausted” and “crisis-ed out” heading into the election, and the broader electorate is beginning to tune them out.

From the New York Times:

This year, anti-Trump voters are grappling with another powerful sentiment: exhaustion.

“Some folks are burned out on outrage,” said Rebecca Lee Funk, the Washington-based founder of the Outrage, a progressive activism group and a purveyor of resistance-era apparel. “People are tired. I think last election we were desperate to get Trump out of office, and folks were willing to rally around that singular call to action. And this election feels different.”

But for Democrats, the mission is similar: Now defending the White House, President Joe Biden is trying to reassemble that sprawling anti-Trump coalition, casting the 2024 contest as another battle to save American democracy as Trump moves toward the Republican nomination.

Biden, however, has a lot of work to do. Interviews with nearly two dozen Democratic voters, activists and officials make clear his challenge in energizing Americans who are unenthusiastic about a likely 2020 rematch, are worried about his age, and, in some cases, are struggling to sustain the searing anger toward Trump that Democrats have relied on for nearly a decade.

“We’re kind of, like, crises-ed out,” said Shannon Caseber, 36, a security guard in Pittsburgh who called the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch a “dumpster fire.” She added, “It’s crisis fatigue, for sure.”

Caseber, a Democrat who would back Biden over Trump, added, “Any sense of urgency that we had with the 2020 election — I think it’s still there in the sense that no one wants Trump to be president, at least for Democrats, but it’s exhausting.”

The Times went on to point out recent polls that further highlighted the left’s lack of motivation to vote in the upcoming election.

A CNN poll recently asked how motivated Americans were to vote in the election. Republicans, out of power and eager to regain it, were more likely to say “extremely motivated.” A Yahoo News/YouGov poll asked voters last fall about their attitudes toward the 2024 election. Thirty-nine percent of Democrats picked “exhaustion” from the list of sentiments offered (a close second to “dread”). Just 26% of Republicans chose “exhaustion.”

Max Dower, the founder of the clothing line Unfortunate Portrait, explained how a shirt he designed reflecting his apathy toward the 2024 election was well-received online.

“We’ve dealt with so many emergencies these past few years: national emergencies, perceived emergencies, real emergencies — it’s just kind of like, that is not really a strong motivator for me anymore,” said Dower, adding he would likely not be voting for Trump.

“A lot of us would like a more positive thing to motivate us,” he added. “Not just purely, ‘Do this or else this bad thing is going to happen.’”