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A Theory of Victory: Part I [1]

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Date: 2025-04-04

The cacophony and chaos facing us is overwhelming—and of course is meant to be.

So this naturally creates (by intention) two unproductive reactions.

Paralysis—just full shut down from the stimulation OR indulging hopelessness because how could we ever defeat everything? Sporadic, undifferentiated over reach—attack anything anyway at anytime based on the emotional impetus to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING.

In one case we give up power without a fight, in another we waste it away for little or no impact.

Depressing right?

So how do we manage these and thread the needle of productive, commensurate actions that are putting us on a path to victory?

A Primer on Clarity

Military strategy is something of an obsession for me and I think this is applicable here. It applies whether you take the pov of Clausewitz, “War is an extension of politics by other means” or LBG in the film “All the Way” saying “Politics just IS war.”

Given also the emergence of more and more sophisticated hybrid war, the lines are blurred more and more. What remains the same is the use of power to meet our goals.

So ok, what are our goals?

Begin with the end in mind is as important to mission based tactics of maneuver warfare as it is Covey’s 7 habits.

The original Greek formulation that security comes first because without it you have nothing is instructive.

We can extend this framing of a clarification of our end state to the political sphere that without a republic we have nothing.

I don’t think anything else, beyond how anything else is a direct instrument to the above, matters.

This means of course we have to accept there are battles we’ll lose or where we will cede ground with the expectation that to acquire power again we will work diligently then to repair the damage.

So Dear Reader you are probably thinking, “ok I’ll bite how do you see this, convince me.”

First, Assessing the landscape:

What We Don’t Have

We have little Federal political power. I’m not in the same boat as Carville and establishment Dems on the interpretation of what this means, but I agree with their premise even if not the determined outcome. We have very little political Federal power. We have majority popular power and growing. (By any measure Trump and his admin and Musk are all unpopular and declining). BUT we do NOT have a VAST awake and active high majority population on our side—yet. This is an important distinction. We do not have yet substantial political party power either as unified popular vision and engagement in the Democratic party OR

as a peeling off of pro rule of law and/or Democracy Republicans We don’t have the Supreme Court—though it may given this radical Trump regime choose the right side periodically it is not a true ally. We don’t have the media. We don’t have financial superiority. Trump has vast immunity and self pardoning ability, DOJ weaponizing capabilities that we don’t have.

Yikes, this looks BAD. I’m not sure I can stomach to continue….but I will.

What do we have?

We have more competent leaders. (low bar but we have plenty of great leaders, they just are not in all the positions we need them to be, tiny detail?) Leadership matters, Wellington said Napoleon on the field was worth 40,000 soldiers. In Trevor Dupuy’s military predictive model (a criminally under rated strategist and a personal hero of mine as a predictive modeler myself) leadership has a multiplier factor of up to 1.2 on military effectiveness--1.44 in practice since it is squared, different field but not altogether alien reference point. We have an unknown but non zero number of Republican Reps and Senators that want to stop Trump but are too cowardly to do so currently. This ISN’T to say we have Republican Senators who want to be our allies, they have their own agenda, and it will not overlap much with ours but there are ones who have genuine interests Trump is eviscerating right now or already has. Plenty of them already hated Trump even before these autocratic actions. We do have the majority of public opinion and growing as stated before. We have the majority of consumption financial power. We have SOME state level power and substantial local government power in some of the largest cities.

Modest Definition of Victory:

The Republic survives in a state that the Mid Terms are a genuine opportunity with reasonable historical parity for Democrats to return to partial power. It is clear Donald Trump CANNOT and WILL NOT run or otherwise have a back door to a third term. (this is critical for more than just the simple damage control reason but is also a litmus test for his enablers)

Here is how I see this defined:

The Administration complies with Court Orders . This is not saying Trump and his cronies won’t keep pushing the limits of interpretation or hoping for (and often getting) the Supreme Court taking their side—those are horrible things but are technically constitutionally sound even if morally repugnant or against even basic norms. Right now one could argue the administration has already ignored court orders, but this isn’t a binary measure. We are successful when/if at some point the administration is regularly following court orders and we don’t see any indication they will be able to successfully ignore them again.

It is about the trend and the trajectory, that pristine constitutional checks and norms won’t be sullied is no longer a feasible aspiration, it is about whether they can survive and revive at this point. The Legislature performs it’s role , which is to say if departments are cut or eliminated or budgets re allocated the Legislature passes laws for these to take place. It is not saying terrible things won’t happen, but that they happen only with explicit legislature support as constitutionally determined. Additionally, this will be happening when we see the congress acting with self interest that is typical for their given election cycles. Neither of these are happening right now. 2026 Election is perceived to be (from our side) and will be relatively free. What does this mean? Turn out for our side should be at least as high as 2018. Why? The damage being done is more broad and more substantive by several order of magnitudes compared to the first Trump term.

If we are not at that turn out level, then the media has failed/is subverted, voter roll purging is too fast and too substantial to be overcome by registration exercises or the fear and demoralization campaign from the Trump admin has succeeded enough to suppress the vote in a more long term way.

Any one of these essentially is the suspension of, if not the end of the Republic. We cannot claim victory with a weaker turn out. If we win the House but barely, that is at most a “tie” and means we are still close to the brink. We can’t assume with an anemic victory the power of the House will be what it was historically and in fact have reason to believe it won’t be.

The above is baseline, modest. It is the bare minimum of victory. The Republic is on life support but alive under these conditions where there is still a semblance of coequal branches of government both de jure and de facto as well as authentic, meaningful elections where the assaults by the Trump Administration are successfully and clearly rebuked.

There are of course more things we could hope for, but I believe we need to be focused on the most critical elements at least initially.

If we get into a more secure footing with time we can always revisit these.

Part II will continue with how we reach these goals.

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