The Democrats who mobilized against Donald J. Trump in 2017 feel differently about protesting his return.
The week after Election Day in 2016, Shirley Morganelli, a women’s health nurse and lifelong Democrat, invited a dozen friends over to the living room of her rowhouse in Bethlehem, Pa., for a glass of wine. Actually, many glasses.
“Misery loves company,” she said.
Ms. Morganelli’s friends, mostly women then in their 50s and 60s, were teachers, nurses, artists and ardent supporters of Hillary Clinton. Some of them had dressed in suffragist white to cast their votes that day, expecting to celebrate the election of America’s first female president. Instead, they had ended the night consoling their college-aged daughters.
“When she called me at three o’clock in the morning — I get all choked up now, because it was the first time I couldn’t say, ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’” said Angela Sinkler, a nurse and former school board member in Bethlehem.
The get-together — Ms. Morganelli called it “unhappy hour” — became a regular event. By the end of the month, commiserating had turned into organizing. They started with writing postcards to elected officials calling on them to oppose Donald J. Trump’s agenda, then moved on to raising money for a local Planned Parenthood chapter and joining in community protests.
Local political candidates began showing up to their gatherings, too, and the group, now called Lehigh Valley ROAR, turned to campaigning. In 2018, several members were elected to City Council in Bethlehem, and Susan Wild, the city solicitor in nearby Allentown and old friend of Ms. Morganelli’s, was elected to Congress with the group’s support.
Lehigh Valley ROAR was one of more than 2,000 similar grass-roots groups formed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s first election — a moment of mass organization larger than even the Tea Party movement at its peak during President Barack Obama’s first term, said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University professor of government and sociology who has studied both movements.