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The "Opposition" Needs New Generals [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-16
A familiar refrain in histories about the American Civil War was that Abe Lincoln spent much of his time just trying to find Generals who could execute his strategy — a strategy that took advantage of the natural strengths he had at his disposal.
In 2025, the Opposition to Trump has neither a strategy nor any decent Generals to conduct an effective opposition. In fact, the current state of the Democratic Party is so confused that they don’t even seem to fully recognize that there are in fact an Opposition Party. Politics is like war and of course as most recognize, they’re always interconnected (e.g. wars tend to result or start where ordinary politics stops). Using an analogy like this is useful on many levels because it helps to highlight those things that are currently missing:
We are missing unified resolve (to accept the mantle of the Opposition) — this means simply that many are refusing to acknowledge that we’re in a fight.
We are missing a Grand Strategy (in the Civil War, both sides developed one early on and stuck with it through the entire war).
We are missing a central leader who can coordinate the contest and communicate to the people why they need to support it.
And we are missing the key subordinates, the Generals, who will follow the leader and carry out their respective portions of the strategy — or where we think that we have them, they have failed or worse still, failed to participate at all.
Senator Schumer was supposed to be one of our top Generals, the one leading the Senatorial portion of the Strategy. But as we just witnessed; he did not fight and he instead highlighted very effectively that the Opposition doesn’t yet have a strategy or a central leader and in fact every general or officer in our corps is essentially in free for all mode right now — rudderless in the face of a well-orchestrated enemy.
The statements coming from the Democratic Senatorial defectors last week were nothing short of surreal; claiming that a Government Shutdown and use of their only source of effective power would be self-defeating just as they were gaining momentum and leverage by the very threat of using it. The statements were blindingly stupid and at times Orwellian (as they represented diametrically opposed perspectives of the actual situation).
Here’s what the Shutdown would have actually given us:
A rallying point and opportunity to hammer home day after day just how bad the provisions in the CR and Trump’s overall plan were — e.g. limitless free publicity.
An assurance that DOGE actions would not be codified and therefore support for the courts to continue in their efforts to block them.
An indication to countless millions of voters from both parties that the American people were willing to stand up to the many unmandated actions now taking place in Trump 2.0.
Instead now we’ve gotten:
Abject capitulation, and zero opportunity to tell our story.
A court system with no justification to stop DOGE because the legislature just authorized it to deconstruct the US government.
Zero relief for the American people as all the bad things associated with a shutdown are happening anyway and are now protected, assured and likely to be permanent instead of temporary.
General Schumer has been routed, in spectacular fashion. During the Civil War this same thing happened again and again to the Union Army — remarkably, it didn’t cost them the war. Lincoln replaced each losing general until he found those who were a) willing to fight and b) smart enough to win.
Our task is harder as we still need a central leader and agreement on the Grand Strategy. But the one thing that we cannot do is allow the current “play dead” and “don’t think” approach to continue. At a minimum, Senator Schumer and the DNC Chairman must relinquish their leadership roles immediately. We don’t answer to them, they answer to us and their failures are simply unacceptable. There’s too much at stake.
And if the DNC tries to choose to ignore us (again), we must move forward with alternative paths, starting with an Opposition Convention — a meeting of those willing to fight and willing to take the time to think through a strategy.
This isn’t a hard thing to accomplish, it just takes a little willpower and commitment.
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