To be sure, Democratic lawmakers didn’t adopt a more confrontational stance simply because of the protests or feedback from their constituents. The party lined up in opposition to Mnuchin, Price, Sessions, and DeVos immediately, and they had warned Republicans not to try to rush them into office before they had a chance to fully vet them. “I think the protests and the actions from Democratic senators are mirrors of each other. I don’t think one is pushing the other,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in an interview. “This is just an exceptional moment in which we have to be united in pushing back against this destructive and hateful agenda.”

Yet the frustration with the Senate Democrats’ pick-and-choose battle strategy had begun bubbling up days before Trump’s immigration order. Liberals were appalled to see stalwart allies like Warren and Bernie Sanders supporting the first two Trump nominees to win confirmation by the Senate: Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. The uproar crested days later when Warren cast a committee vote in favor of Ben Carson’s nomination for secretary of housing and urban development. Democrats had criticized Carson’s lack of experience in housing policy, but they mostly laid off him during his confirmation hearing, failing even to ask him whether he had believed, as his spokesman told The Hill shortly after the election, that he was unqualified to lead a Cabinet agency.

To Democratic activists, that vote encapsulated everything that was wrong about the party’s posture in the Senate. Even Cher took notice.

WHY R DEMOCRATS, I RESPECT,HELPING UNFIT GOP NOMINEES🌊⛵️THROUGH CONFORMATION HEARINGS🙄

I AM SOOO DISAPPOINTED IN U‼️

THIS IS A BITTER PILL🤢 — Cher (@cher) January 27, 2017

“Every single one of these nominees has been extreme, corrupt, unqualified,” Chamberlain said. “There is no argument that can be made that Ben Carson is qualified to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His only qualification is that he’s lived in a house.”

As the reviews came pouring in on social media, Warren posted a lengthy defense of her vote on Facebook. She had sent Carson a lengthy list of questions, and in response, she said he had “made good, detailed promises, on everything from protecting anti-homelessness programs to enforcing fair housing laws. Promises that—if they’re honored—would help a lot of working families.”

She further explained:

Yes, I have serious, deep, profound concerns about Dr. Carson’s inexperience to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Yes, I adamantly disagree with many of the outrageous things that Dr. Carson said during his presidential campaign. Yes, he is not the nominee I wanted. But ‘the nominee I wanted’ is not the test.

Groups like MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and Our Revolution are now pushing Senate Democrats to oppose all Trump nominees and use every procedural tool they can to stall action in the Senate until Trump reverses course on the immigration order and his broader agenda. Yet even as Democrats dial up the obstruction, they are unlikely to go that far. Our Revolution is the grassroots coalition that grew out of Sanders’s presidential campaign, yet the Vermont senator voted for both Mattis and Kelly. “It did come as a surprise to me,” said Shannon Jackson, a former senior adviser to Sanders who is now executive director of Our Revolution. Jackson refused to criticize him, however. “I trust the senator made his decision based on the ideals and issues he had promoted his whole life,” he said.