The Trump Opposition Needs Its Second Wind

In a number of recent articles, I have tried to make sense of the climate of drift and enervation that now seems to permeate the Trump administration and, in some ways, the country. Making sense of these things isn’t just interesting in the abstract or an opportunity to take on the administration. It’s important to know exactly where we are, what is possible now that might not have been possible in the spring or even a few months ago. And that’s important because we’re all exhausted. It’s not just about the Trump administration. In a way, so is the opposition to Trump, albeit in a very different way. It’s been a very long year.

I first proposed my idea for the DOJ in Exile back in April. If you are unfamiliar with the DOJ-in-Exile concept, this article explains the idea. But the main points I’m about to make don’t require knowing these details. As I have mentioned several times here and to a number of you in email correspondence, this has been more difficult than I expected. For various reasons, I didn’t want to direct it myself or even participate in it. I wanted to find a group that wanted to do it and pass on the idea and the name to them. But people were afraid. Without me actually asking, various TPM readers came forward with pledges probably totaling over a million dollars. So money wouldn’t be a problem. But the kind of people who would run it or take responsibility for it were afraid. Members of the major benefactor groups were afraid. People who reloaded hard were afraid. Sometimes they didn’t say as much on calls, but I could read their intonations and realized that a conversation would go nowhere.