I Nominate Eric Holder To Lead The Legal Resistance

Cory Booker went on television this weekend and called himself part of the resistance. I’m paraphrasing because I didn’t watch — and I have no intention of watching white media for a while yet — but it was refreshing to be told that at least one person with political power is calling this what it is. Too many politicians, on both sides of aisle, seem eager to appease the president-elect. In the stages of grief, most people seem stuck in bargaining.

The resistance must be non-violent. For two reasons:

1. Nothing would make the racists happier right now than for there to be some violence. Remember the Reichstag fire. The very first time there is meaningful opposition to Trump rule will beget some kind of violent distraction in hopes of aggrandizing more authoritarian control. It’s in the playbook.

2. The only thing that could make Trump more powerful than he is right now would be for some idiot to make him a God. The best argument against Trumpism will always be Donald Trump himself. We need him alive.

Right now, the resistance has no leaders. I mean, I don’t know, maybe liberal white men have a leader if they buy into that Bernie Sanders crap that we lost our way by not appealing to the “working-class white man.” Personally, I think trying to pander to and co-opt racist whites is one of the reasons we got here in the first place, but I’m done with the part of my life that has me seriously giving a s**t about what white people say they want.

As we think about who might make up our government in exile, I think one shadow cabinet position is locked up: Eric Holder for chief lawyer.

Holder has been out there doing work. He’s organizing to take back local government. He’s putting James Comey on blast. He’s writing a paper calling for the abolition of the Electoral College.

Yeah, the Electoral College, that thing that allows a white minority of voters to thwart the popular will in a national election. Holder’s had enough of it. And when pressed on Bill Maher this weekend about the impossibility of getting three-quarters of the states to ratify a constitutional amendment that will decrease much of their power, Holder said: “But so all right, it involves heavy lifting, let’s lift heavy, let’s do it.”

See, a resistance movement is not bound by practicality. It doesn’t have to govern, and it surely doesn’t have to compromise. Holder, who was fairly cautious and centrist while serving as the actual Attorney General, seems to understand that.

I’m willing to take his lead on ways that we can legally resist the storm to come.

Eric Holder Says The Electoral College Must Be Abolished [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Eric Holder To Lead Redistricting Effort, In Case Any Of You ‘Political Revolution’ People Are Interested

---

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.