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All right, listen, this time around, another resistance to Trump is simply not going to cut it. I don’t say this because the first term resistance didn’t succeed in many ways it did, but it’s because Republicans and Maga and trumpists have something much bigger up their sleeve this time around. Let me remind you. Back in 2016 when Trump was elected, we saw the resistance emerge, and this included resist bumper stickers, social media, posts, etc, and basically it was probably millions of Americans getting off the sidelines, pushing back against an extreme and chaotic agenda. And the thinking then was, if we can hold Trump off for four years, we can restore normalcy. Let’s endure this chapter, and then the country will come to its senses, and things will go back to normal. And to a degree, it did succeed. The resistance during Trump’s first term, protected the Affordable Care Act from being gutted. It built a legal and civic infrastructure that took Trump to court and won some battles. It energized candidates in 2018
and it played a role in defeating Trump in 2020 the resistance that started in 2016 to a degree can be thanked for defeating Trump in 2020 and Joe Biden being a more normal president for four years. But here’s the thing that you have to understand, when Trump was defeated in 2020 Republicans didn’t just sit around complaining. They built, they created a media ecosystem ideological outfits. They nurtured a generation of right wing influencers. They were taking electoral hits, no doubt, but they were planning for a future Trump government and more enduring change that will outlast Donald Trump. They created Project 2025 which is going to shape the government into something far more radical and right wing when Trump takes power. So notice that when Biden won, Maga didn’t just resist, they set their sights way higher into an enduring opposition, and that’s what the left needs to do now, because we are not facing the same sort of Trump term that we faced in 2017 when Trump was sworn in in January. We are now facing a Trump that has no elections left to run, according to some, is setting up JD Vance and his own son, Don Jr, to run alongside JD in 2028 they want to reshape bureaucratic institutions in their image. So we need something more durable and more forward looking that I would call an opposition, not a resistance. Mark Elias laid out the components, and they are all really important. One you have to win elections. The campaigning has to improve.
Democrats aren’t the best at campaigning. There were a number of mistakes, missteps during the Harris campaign. Don’t put limitations on yourself. Protect democracy. Play to win, not play nice. You’ve got to win some elections. That means 2026, for sure. Second, the 10 does need to be bigger. And I’m not talking about we welcome hateful white supremacist or this sort of thing. But one of the things that happened during successful left wing movements, including the New Deal era, is there were core ideas which most people were behind. But there were people who wanted to go further than those core ideas, but they still participated because they knew those core ideas are a great next step. There were people who didn’t like every single one of those core ideas, but they liked enough of them to say, I’m also participating. And everybody was welcomed. So we don’t want litmus tests. We don’t want purity tests. We need to grow the 10. Number three, we must invest in institutions that will support this opposition. Conservatives have spent decades doing it. They’ve got the daily wire with investors. Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation, which now has built project 2025 imagine a think tank develops the paper that becomes the framework for how they are going to govern. We need that. We don’t really have it. Number four, the communication strategy needs to be completely overhauled. The lying on the elite media outlets to reach a tiny, shrinking audience. It’s not going to work. The right had this ecosystem of podcasts and interviews. This isn’t me saying Kamala would have won if she did. Rogan, No, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But we need a year in and year out left wing ecosystem. It’s not just about relevance and reach. It’s about much more than that, and it’s creating an enduring ecosystem. And then number five, the left needs to use the courts as unabashedly as Trump uses the courts. Trump will use the courts however he can to get out of trouble, to get policy done, to accomplish all sorts of different legislative goals. On the left were often more hesitant because we say, I don’t know if that’s right. I’m just not sure. I don’t know about that.
We’ve got to do it. We cannot disarm when they have tools they are willing to use. We need to use them as well. This is an opposition. This is not resistance. Hashtag resist. This is something bigger. It’s necessary, and I’m going to lay out more particulars of how to achieve it in future videos. Let me know what you think you.
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