The Resistance, as it’s come to be known, was born of anger and abandonment.

The anger began the day after the election. Donald Trump, rejected by a decisive majority of voters, had been declared the next president of the United States. Republicans controlled all three branches of the federal government, as well as 32 state legislatures and 33 governor’s mansions—their strongest lock on power in nearly a century. Liberalism had been dealt its most stunning and consequential defeat in American history.

But around sunset that evening, the protests began. In New York and Chicago, demonstrators stormed Trump’s buildings. In Los Angeles, they beat orange piñatas to a pulp and spray-painted anti-Trump obscenities on the Los Angeles Times building. In Oakland and Portland, fires and fights broke out; dozens were arrested on riot charges. In at least 50 cities and towns, protesters blocked traffic, burned Trump in effigy, and scuffled with his defenders. And night after night that first week, they just kept coming out. “We! Reject! The president-elect!” they chanted. In a display of partisan fury, they took their hashtag slogan—#Notmypresident—from the Tea Party’s racist campaign to discredit Barack Obama.

The abandonment, like the anger, was swift. At the very moment that the burgeoning opposition needed stalwart leadership, the Democratic Party opted for obedience to the political norms that Trump and the Republicans had so openly flouted. Hillary Clinton delivered her concession speech and disappeared into the woods. President Obama tried to gently tutor his successor and persuade the left to chill. Bernie Sanders said he’d be “delighted” to work with Trump on trade. Even left-leaning senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio sounded less like committed members of the opposition than a conquered people suing for peace. “Vichy Democrats” became a common jibe. Liberals determined to oppose Trump, it was clear, would not only have to fight the president at every turn—they would also have to rebuild the Democratic Party from the base up.

But it is these twin elements—the unanticipated upswelling at the grassroots and the disarray at the top—that offer Democrats their most promising opportunity since the New Left forced the party to embrace a broader and more inclusive agenda in the Sixties. For the first time in decades, liberalism has been infused with a sense of energy and purpose that goes far beyond the vague “hope and change” that Obama promised in 2008. Ever since January, when Michael Moore called for “100 days of resistance” to counter Trump’s first 100 days in office, the Resistance has been winning on virtually every front. It has emboldened wobbly Democrats in Congress and helped beat back the initial push to repeal Obamacare. It dispatched a cabinet nominee and Trump’s national security adviser, and forced his attorney general to recuse himself from the most significant and far-reaching investigation since Watergate. It has mounted successful legal challenges to Trump’s travel ban and punishment of “sanctuary cities.” And through it all, it has given birth to a host of dynamic new organizations determined to mobilize grassroots activists, fashion a more progressive and effective agenda, and rebuild a liberal majority at the state and local level, precinct by precinct. After three short months, the Resistance is shaping up to be one of the signal political forces in American history.