Journal of International Affairs Editorial Board

PROTEST AT THE CENTER OF AMERICAN POLITICS

Author(s): Michael T. Heaney
Source: Journal of International Affairs , Spring/Summer 2020, Vol. 73, No. 2,
POLITICS OF PROTEST (Spring/Summer 2020), pp. 195-208
Published by: Journal of International Affairs Editorial Board

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26939975

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 PROTEST AT THE CENTER OF
AMERICAN POLITICS

Michael T. Heaney

Abstract: Recognizing the increasing ubiquity of protest in the United States,

this article considers why protest has become so central to American politics.
It argues that three factors contribute substantially to this situation: institu-
tional illegitimacy, political polarization, and decentralization of communica-
tions media. Institutional illegitimacy means that Americans are less likely
to trust the prevailing system of government, such as selecting the president
through the Electoral College, making them more likely to believe that protest
is necessary to have their voices heard. Political polarization coincides with
having elected officials on the extremes of the political spectrum, rather than
toward the moderate center. Citizens are thus more likely to be dissatisfied
with elected officials and to turn out to protest them. Decentralization of com-
munications media, especially social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram),
allows activists to communicate with one another more readily and, therefore,
to organize protests quickly and with few financial resources. These conditions
are unlikely to change in the near future outside of a major partisan realign-
ment. Recent protests organized by Black Lives Matter and related groups, in
response to the deaths of George Floyd and many other African Americans,
illustrate the contemporary nature of activism, social movements, and protest
in the United States.

INTRODUCTION
The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers on 25 May
2020 was a pivotal event that unleashed a perfect storm of politics and
protest. Prior to Floyd’s death, the economy and society of the United States
had been at a virtual standstill for months as a result of the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Many Americans had been unemployed or confined to their homes
due to the outbreak. The Democratic Party had just settled on Joe Biden as
its presidential nominee. That selection set the stage for the 2020 general
election after nearly four years of highly divisive leadership on the part of

Journal of International Affairs, 73, no. 2. 195

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Michael T. Heaney

President Donald Trump. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which
opposes police brutality and other violence against Black people, had expe-
rienced somewhat less media visibility following its peak in 2016.1 In this
context, the circulation of videos depicting the unjustified killing of Floyd,
an African-American man, reinvigorated cries of injustice over the deaths of
so many African Americans, such as Tanisha Anderson, Rekia Boyd, Michael
Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, India Kager, and Trayvon Martin.
The extensiveness of BLM protests in the spring and summer of 2020—
which spanned urban, suburban, and rural areas throughout the country—is
hard to appreciate fully. Writers for the Washington Post and the New York
Times dubbed these as perhaps the broadest protests in American history.2
Surveys of protest participants measured unprecedented levels of racial
diversity at these events.3 Mass media covered the demonstrations with
greater intensity than any other protests since the Kent State killings in
1970, just over 50 years ago.4 For a month or more, these protests were
consistently front-page news.
It is possible to enumerate a long list of potential causes behind the sus-
tained force of the post-Floyd protests. We might start with the sheer bar-
barity of Floyd’s murder and the clarity with which it was captured on video.
We might point to the fact that people were more available to protest due
to the COVID-19 crisis.5 We might observe that President Donald Trump
seems to have encouraged and prolonged the protests in the belief that they
would bolster his “law and order” candidacy.6 But these explanations are all
too specific to the case at hand. What we ultimately need are explanations
for why protests have become such a fundamental part of the way that
Americans seek to communicate their views to government these days.
While demonstrations calling for justice in the death of George Floyd are
likely the most riveting protests that have emerged in some time, they are
certainly not the only contentious mobilizations during the Trump admin-
istration, or even during 2020. It was not long before Floyd’s death that
attention had been focused on anti- and pro-quarantine protests, under-
taken by conservatives and liberals alike, despite the risks they may have
posed to public health.7 Earlier in his presidency, Trump’s inauguration itself
helped to launch oppositional social movements of women, scientists, and
others.8 In fact, Trump’s own political viability had been nurtured by protest
through the Tea Party movement.9 Before Trump and the Tea Party, there
were vibrant movements for peace, immigrant rights, and global justice.10
There is clearly something going on here beyond George Floyd, Donald
Trump, or COVID-19. Why is protest so important to our politics?
I argue that there are three factors that are making protest an increas-
ingly critical political tool. The first is institutional illegitimacy. Americans
are progressively more skeptical that political institutions operate in an

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 Protest at the Center of American Politics

acceptable way. The second is polarization. With elected officials more

likely to be on the edges of the political spectrum—rather than toward the
center—citizens are more likely to find themselves disagreeing passionately
with the government, making the desire to protest more compelling. The
third is decentralization of communications media. Protest is easier to do,
so why not? This essay discusses each of these factors and what may or may
not be done to reverse these trends. It takes the position that true reform
would be very challenging to put into effect outside of a historic realignment
of partisan politics.

INSTITUTIONAL ILLEGITIMACY
Elections are a key part of how people think about democracy in America.
It is not uncommon for people to equate voting with “doing one’s civic
duty.” Yet, even under the best of circumstances, elections rarely deliver
what they promise in terms of representation. Christopher Achen and Larry
Bartels explain in Democracy for Realists that electoral outcomes are more
likely to reflect people’s understandings of their own social identities than
their analysis of policies or government performance.11 In general, most
citizens lack the interest, information, or capacity to make decisions on any
other basis.
Even if elections are imperfect, most people might be willing to go along
with them if they seem to be generally fair. However, perceived lack of fair-
ness has been a notable concern in recent years, with the Electoral College
often cited as a key part of the problem.12 In this scheme, rural areas are
overrepresented relative to urban areas. Of course, there is another side
to this argument, as the Electoral College serves important functions. It
ensures that each state contributes substantively to the selection of the
president and that support for the winning candidate is distributed widely
across the country.
Presidential selection rules make it possible for a candidate to win a
majority in the Electoral College without winning a majority of the popular
vote. For people who hold closely to majority-rule views of democracy,
this system seems unfair. Nevertheless, if this discrepancy is mostly hypo-
thetical—that is, it happens rarely at best—the system might be acceptable.
However, as the winner of the popular vote failed to win the majority in
the Electoral College twice in the last 20 years—and since the system ben-
efitted the Republican candidate in both cases—some people are inclined
to argue that the rules are systematically unjust.13 They may feel that their
votes are not being given the weight that they deserve, casting doubt on the
legitimacy of the whole electoral system. As a result, protest may appear, to
many, to be the only way to really be heard. Some activists on the Far Left
believe that this system codifies fascism, thus morally requiring them to

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Michael T. Heaney

resist it, violently if necessary.14

Citizens living in rural areas—the “beneficiaries” of Electoral College
bias—also raise objections to the contemporary political system. They
witness the nation’s growth trajectory leaning toward the urban and coastal
areas, with industries evolving toward high tech and away from the manufac-
turing and agricultural bases that have traditionally sustained the economy.
As Kathy Cramer emphasized in The Politics of Resentment, these citizens do
not believe that laws such as the Affordable Care Act are really written to
benefit them.15 The frustrations of these people helped to motivate the for-
mation of the Tea Party movement, which spawned widespread conservative
protests during the early years of the presidency of Barack Obama.16
People have many other complaints about the ways that American poli-
tics work, for sure. They raise objections to the ways that voting districts
are drawn, the influence of monied interests in the system, rules for voter
registration and eligibility, and myriad other institutional features. Lack of
confidence in institutions extends from the national level to local govern-
ment, where citizens are losing faith in the equitable administration of
justice by police departments.17 Waning faith in institutions is characteristic
of the era we live in.
Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum respond to and attempt
to amplify these complaints in order to win votes. This competition further
undermines trust in the system and raises the expected value of protest.
For example, large percentages of both Democratic and Republican voters
now say that they would not accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential
election if their preferred candidate lost because of mail-in ballots.18 Thus,
it seems likely that large numbers of people will protest the results of the
2020 election, no matter what the outcome. These expectations raise the
specter of a diminished American democracy after 2021.

POLITICAL POLARIZATION
In developing his theory of partisan convergence, political scientist
Anthony Downs explained how a system of voting by majority rule would
lead competing political parties to develop policy platforms that were very
similar to one another.19 This theory made intuitive sense when it was devel-
oped during the 1950s. During that era, struggles over questions of race and
segregation helped to create more differences within political parties than
between them. At that time, the stable equilibrium of American politics
pushed the major parties to the ideological center.
The rise of party primaries during the 1960s and 1970s to nominate
candidates for general elections led to significant departures from the pre-
dictions of Downs’ theory. Outside groups could then use primaries—which
attracted only a fraction of the eligible voters—to prod candidates toward

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 Protest at the Center of American Politics

the edges of the political spectrum. Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos
observed that social movements helped to exacerbate these trends in their
efforts to address social problems, such as systemic racism.20 This dynamic
fed a cycle in which left-leaning protest encouraged right-leaning protest,
which then motivated more left-leaning protest, etc.
Robert Boatright found that these trends owed not only to social move-
ments, but also to dedicated partisan organizations that sought to shape the
ideological dispositions of their allied parties.21 Strategies to push candidates
to the extremes have typically been associated with conservative organiza-
tions, such as the Club for Growth and the Tea Party.22 Yet Democrats are
increasingly embracing these tactics as well, with recent Democratic primary
successes by outsider candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in New
York’s 14th congressional district in 2018, and Cori Bush, in Missouri’s 1st
congressional district in 2020. The victories of these candidates will likely
pull the Democratic Party further to the ideological left, just as the success
of Tea Party candidates has pulled the Republican Party further to the ideo-
logical right.23
As both political parties are more likely to nominate candidates who are
ideologically extreme—rather than centrists—the chances that elected offi-
cials are relative extremists have risen dramatically. Polarization is the result.
In other words, when an election is over, one side or the other is probably
very unsatisfied. As a result, the losers often adopt divisive rhetoric, such
as declaring that an elected official is “not my governor” or “not my presi-
dent.” In this environment, partisans are ready to protest the new office
holder before they are even sworn in. Use of social media, such as Facebook
or Twitter, jolts the cascade even more by encouraging people to develop
negative attitudes toward those who disagree with them.24
Polarization creates self-reinforcing pressures that are very difficult for
parties to avoid. As Cass Sunstein points out in #republic, when people
deliberate, they tend to choose options at the extremes, rather than com-
promise options.25 That is, even when someone comes through and offers
a reasonable moderate alternative, that choice is less likely to win over a
group than is a more radical choice. As a result, some polarization feeds
more polarization.
The debate over reforming policing is illustrative of this tendency toward
polarization. When Black Americans are unjustifiably murdered by police
officers, the loudest activists quickly divide into camps, with one side
chanting slogans such as “abolish the police” and the other insisting that
“Blue [i.e. police] Lives Matter”.26 These divisions make it challenging to
advance consensus reforms, such as improved training for police officers.
Ironically, the majority of activists themselves often favor middle-ground
positions. In a Russell Sage Foundation–funded study on which I collabo-

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Michael T. Heaney

rated with Dana Fisher and Stella Rouse, we found that participants in the
2020 March on Washington, organized by Rev. Al Sharpton, placed a higher
priority on “improv[ing] police training to increase racial sensitivity” than
they did on “abolish[ing]” or “defund[ing]” the police.27 Even with these
objectives on activists’ minds, media attention and public discourse focus
instead on divisive proposals.28 Along these lines, Figure 1 shows an activist
carrying a “defund the police” sign in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 10 August
2020.

Figure 1. Protest Against the 2020 Democratic National Convention

Source: Photo by Saudiel Benitez, Jr.

DECENTRALIZATION OF COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA

In his classic book, The Whole World is Watching, Todd Gitlin described
with fascinating detail the process through which large protests were planned
by Students for Democratic Society during the 1960s.29 Demonstrations
were scheduled months in advance, usually with a focus on one event in
the fall and one event in the spring. Organizations communicated with their
members through postal mail. They depended heavily on member dues to
finance their work. The slow-moving planning machinery placed limits to
how responsive activists could be to changing events. Nonetheless, the long
planning process meant that the strategy behind each event was considered

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 Protest at the Center of American Politics

methodically as part of an elaborate agenda to remake society.

Zeynep Tufekci’s contemporary book, Twitter and Tear Gas, presents a
considerably different image of today’s protest planning. Online technolo-
gies—such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—make it possible for activ-
ists to register their grievances within hours or days of events taking place.30
Familiar tactics can be deployed in short order. These tools make it possible
for activists to respond seamlessly to political developments, which is an
advantage of this rapidity. However, activists who plan protests quickly
and reflexively often do so without a well-developed strategy for influence.
Protesters in this system know what they do not like but often lack the
organization and follow-up to force the changes they want.
The justice for George Floyd protests leveraged evolving communica-
tion technologies for maximum possible responsiveness. For example, the
#JusticeForGeorgeFloyd hashtag was trending on Twitter the day after
Floyd’s death.31 This development demonstrates that activists quickly rec-
ognized the broader political significance of what happened to Floyd and
framed his death in the context of the BLM movement. Such hashtags
become memes that encapsulate information that diffuses widely and rap-
idly.32 Within a week, protests on this issue had begun to spread throughout
the country and the world.
Beyond allowing timely responses, rapid communication technologies
help protesters to evade infiltration and control by the authorities. During
the peak of the Floyd mobilizations, I observed that protest leaders some-
times announced protests via Instagram less than 24 hours before demon-
strations were to take place. The short notice was sufficient for committed
activists but was intended to make it harder for police to try to shut down or
corral the protests. The result was that some protests were smaller in terms
of number of participants than they might have been, since it was hard for
many activists to plan to be there, but the mobilizations were more agile
than well-planned events might have been.
Rapid responses on social media not only have the capacity to coax
marchers into the streets, but also have the potential to change substan-
tive policy discussions. For example, I followed the discussion of “defund
the police” in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder on Twitter and in the mass
media.33 Figure 2 below shows how a Twitter discussion may lead mass
media coverage. While tweets occur with a much greater frequency than
news items—approximately 100,000 times more often—the time trends in
this graph suggest that media discussion of this topic (the solid line) may
have been prompted, in part, by online conversations (the dashed line).
Protest is so easy to organize these days that anyone can do it, even
without substantial resources or a formal organization supporting them.34
The formal machinery once used by Students for a Democratic Society and

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Michael T. Heaney

Figure 2. Mass Media Versus Social Media Attention to “Defund the

Police”

Source: Author tabulations using Meltwater and NewsBank.

other groups is no longer needed. With barriers to entry so low and the
possible impact so high, it is not surprising that people are ready to protest
now for just about anything. Some protests may gather only a handful of
people who carry signs and chant slogans, but some protests may bring out
thousands of people with only a day’s notice. If their cause is compelling—as
it is in the case of George Floyd’s death—then the possibility for widespread
support is easily within reach.

BEYOND PROTEST?
American politics today faces sustained challenges to the legitimacy of
institutions, spiraling political polarization, and ever more decentralized
communications media. These conditions are ripe for protest. If Americans
see a problem, staging a protest is usually a go-to political response. More
traditional options—such as voting, running for office, or contacting elected
officials—seem, to many people, to be too slow, too corrupt, or too unlikely
to work.
George Floyd’s murder was situated within these conditions. When
combined with the special circumstances of COVID-19, idleness and unem-
ployment, and Trump’s antagonism, it released a cascade of mobilization
around the United States and the world. From one perspective, the robust
use of protest is a sign of a healthy democracy. It reflects a vibrant civil
society, shows that freedom of expression cannot be suppressed by pseudo-
authoritarian leaders, and reveals people embracing their powers as citizens.
At the same time, something important is broken here. I cannot predict
who will be the next president of the United States with any confidence.

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 Protest at the Center of American Politics

Yet, I can predict that whoever is elected will face intense and sustained
protests in opposition to their administration. Maybe those protests will be
good and necessary. Maybe I will even personally join in the protests. But
it is also a worthy aspiration that elections would help to settle our political
disagreements, rather than provoke more disagreements.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to these problems. Attempts to
systematically quash protest have proliferated around the states in recent
years, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.35 These
efforts are likely to lose challenges in the courts, though in the process,
they will bring much hardship to the lives of people who face punishments
for exercising their constitutional rights. The chilling consequences of pros-
ecuting peaceful protesters are undeniable. As a society, we are prudent to
heed the advice of James Madison that the damage done by attempting to
suppress factions is worse than the mischief of factions themselves.36
Amending the Constitution to revise the Electoral College system is not
a viable option, as the likelihood of passing all the necessary hurdles seems
exceedingly remote. And even if the Electoral College could be replaced, the
new system would likely lead to legitimacy problems as well. For example,
people living in less populated areas could become increasingly aggrieved
with the constitutional order because they had less of a say in it.
Rather than amending the Constitution, a more realistic option may be
for existing political actors to find better ways to pursue their goals within
the existing constitutional framework. One might argue, for example, that
the current “crisis” of Electoral College illegitimacy is really a matter of the
contemporary Democratic Party having a harder time creating a program
that is appealing to people in suburban and rural areas. Do the Democrats
simply need to change their platform and campaign strategy? Perhaps they
could rebalance the urban-rural pattern of support by offering more in
terms of transportation infrastructure, federal aid to infuse high-technology
training and capital where old-style manufacturing has lost to global compe-
tition, and greater recognition of traditional rural cultures. Doing so could
bring more rural votes into the Democratic column. Indeed, it was less than
30 years ago that Bill Clinton’s winning presidential coalition included
nearly the entire Mississippi River Valley. Still, such a change would be
easier said than done, as Democrats face challenges from polarization within
their primaries.
It is tempting to point to President Trump, who has been a uniquely bad
actor in attempting to undermine trust in American political institutions.37
If we do not target Trump, then perhaps we should blame the Republican
Party that has aided and abetted him.38 For example, it is within the power
of the party to require that its presidential nominee make their tax returns
public, comply with campaign finance laws, and obey the Hatch Act, which

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Michael T. Heaney

prevents federal employees from conducting partisan activities on federal

property. However, it is wise to be mindful of the fact that Trump and the
contemporary Republican Party are products of a system. Yes, they have
contributed to shaping that system, but even the top-level Republican
leadership is subject to pressures from grassroots activists, donors, corpo-
rate media, and many other directions. Consequently, it is hard to see how
changing top leadership or adopting new ethical reforms—on their own—
would bring about lasting effects.
Readers of this essay may be frustrated by the paucity of concrete and
powerful solutions offered. I wish that I could report that there are piercing
solutions to America’s political problems developing on the horizon. A key
barrier to this aspiration is that many of the features of the current system
are in a stable equilibrium, meaning that departures from the current
practices of the system are met by pressures to return to the way things
were. For example, if both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party
campaigned on more moderate platforms in the 2024 presidential election,
extremists within one or both of the parties would surely push for a return
to a more extreme posture in 2028. The losing side in the 2024 election
would likely be able to make the most compelling case for doing so. Thus,
even major efforts at moderation would likely be short lived.
Another barrier to reform is that that the current problems with American
politics are rooted less in particular laws or institutions than they are in the
extant political culture. Thus, responsibility for our problems is diffused
throughout the society; we all share it. People lack empathy for those on
the other side. Conservatives cannot understand why liberals want to bring
down memorials to slaveholders. Liberals cannot understand why conserva-
tives are disturbed when statues are toppled by the force of angry mobs.
Both sides are talking past one another.
Perhaps the greatest chance for moderation and reform would present
itself if the country faced a crisis so grave that people abandoned one polit-
ical party en masse and shifted to another party. A shift of this magnitude
began in 1932 when many voters left the Republican Party during the Great
Depression.39 This shift continued during the 1930s and was reinforced by
World War II, which required national unity to combat external threats.
This realignment gave the newly dominant Democratic Party enough power
to restructure institutions that could restore trust in government, which had
not been as readily achieved 20 years earlier when an ambitious agenda of
reform was pushed during the Progressive Era.
The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to be the crisis that creates
a shift in partisan control comparable to the aftermath of the Great
Depression. If this occurred, it is possible that the country would enjoy a
new era of stable governance, thus reducing the need for perpetual protest.

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 Protest at the Center of American Politics

A first test of whether increased trust is on the horizon would be if the

leadership and grassroots activists of both the Democrats and Republicans
were able to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election without
a prolonged fight. This outcome would be a minimum requirement for
Americans to begin regaining trust in their government and the constitu-
tional order. Even under the best of circumstances, the nation faces a long
road to recovery after what has been more than two decades of an increas-
ingly dysfunctional democratic system.
If a partisan realignment is not in the making, then we are stuck—for
now—with protest at the center of American politics.

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Michael T. Heaney

NOTES
1 Chloe Haimson, “Interactional Resistance During Black Lives Matter Protests: The Political Stakes of
Rebelling Against the Public Order,” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 25 no. 2 (2020): 185-200.
2 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement
in U.S. History,” New York Times, 3 July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/
george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html; Lara Putnam, Erica Chenoweth, and Jeremy Pressman, “The
Floyd Protests Are the Broadest in U.S. History—and Are Spreading to White, Small-Town America,”
Washington Post, 6 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/06/floyd-protests-are-
broadest-us-history-are-spreading-white-small-town-america/.

3 Amy Harmon and Sabrina Tavernise, “One Big Difference About George Floyd Protests: Many White
Faces,” New York Times, 12 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/george-floyd-white-
protesters.html; Doug McAdam, “We’ve Never Seen Protests Like These Before,” Jacobin, 20 June, 2020,
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/george-floyd-protests-black-lives-matter-riots-demonstrations/.

4 Michael T. Heaney, “The George Floyd Protests Generated More Media Coverage than Any Protest
in 50 Years,” Washington Post, 6 July 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/06/george-
floyd-protests-generatedmore-media-coverage-than-any-protest-50-years/.

5 Maneesh Arora, “How the Coronavirus Pandemic Helped the Floyd Protests Become the Biggest in
U.S. History,” Washington Post, 5 August 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/05/
how-coronavirus-pandemic-helped-floyd-protests-become-biggest-us-history/.

6 David Smith, “Trump Reaches for Nixon Playbook After Protests That Have Rocked America,”
Guardian, 7 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/donald-trump-re-election-
nixon-protests-strategy.

7 Michael T. Heaney, “Americans Are Taking Collective Action on Both Sides of COVID-Related
Policies,” Mischiefs of Faction, 2 June 2020, https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/americans-are-
taking-collective-action-on-both-sides-of-covid-related-policies.

8 Dana R. Fisher, American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2019); David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, eds., The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-
Trump Opposition Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

9 Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Bareto, Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary
Politics in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

10 Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party
After 9/11 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
11 Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce
Responsive Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

12 John Mark Hansen, “Equal Voice by Half Measures,” Michigan Law Review First Impressions 106 no. 1
(2008): 100-104; Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College
(New York: All Points Books, 2020).

13 George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2019).

14 Judith Butler, “Protest, Violent and Nonviolent,” in Antidemocracy in America: Truth, Power and
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16 Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
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 Protest at the Center of American Politics
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22 Rachel M. Blum, How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics (Chicago:
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25 Cass R. Sunstein, #republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton: Princeton
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30 Zeynep Tufecki, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven: Yale
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31 Meltwater, “Meltwater: Media Monitoring & Social Listening Platform,” Accessed 11 July 2020, http://
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32 Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles, #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and
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33 Meltwater, “Meltwater: Media Monitoring & Social Listening Platform.”; NewsBank, “NewsBank,” 19 July
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36 James Madison, Federalist No. 10: “The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against

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Michael T. Heaney

Domestic Faction and Insurrection,” New York Daily Advertiser, 22 November 1787.

37 Julia Azari, “The Challenge of Trump’s Presidency is Legitimacy, Not Power,” Vox, 17 April 2018,
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39 James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the
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