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Who is Torpedo Trump and What's our Agenda?

The purpose of Torpedo Trump is to make the resistance to Trump into a more cogent and effective opposition, and use it to sink the Trump presidency. Trump was not elected to change the American system of government, but that's his agenda, to undermine and discredit public authority and build a new political system centered upon himself. That is not what we have been bequeathed by the nation's founders. They carefully designed a system in which it would be very difficult for power to become concentrated in a single individual, and one in which the government could not be used by a president to profit from his office and enrich himself. Like Redefeat Bush and Redefeat Trump, both past projects of Torpedo Trump founder David Lytel, it is hoped that it will someday include many more. At its origin it is one guy, an ardent activist and political professional. David was the first person hired in the Clinton White House specifically (in 1993) to work full time not on encryption or telecom but as an Internet proselytizer. He was also co-developer of Whitehouse.gov, called by Wired “easily one of the best sites on the Net.” A former member of the Ithaca City Council he has a B.A. with honors from Brown University, an M.S. from Ithaca College and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in American Politics and Government. In 2004 he founded and ran the Committee to Redefeat the President at redefeatbush.com. It organized Tuesday Night Democratic Clubs where it provided volunteers with cell phones and lists of unregistered voters. In 2024 he ran RedefeatTrump.com which supported voter registration volunteers in the six swing states. He co-founded Democrats.com and Majority Messaging, both e-mail list building companies that have raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates and causes. Ask your doctor: Is an organized, cogent opposition to fascists right for you? You hardly need a Doctor of Government to know that both your government and your politics are both gravely ill. The last rites have not been given, but the priest has been called. Democracies die, not in battle but by power-hungry holders of high office who methodically destroy competing centers of power. Congress is dying of self-immolation, the Supreme Court of corruption and Trump is also intimidating corporations, universities and anyone brave enough to stand up to him. In a state with a single dominant party elections continue to sustain the legitimacy of the state, but their outcomes are not in doubt. The ritual of voting is kept alive in Russia, China, Hungary but the voters, the citizens, control nothing. We ask that you sign up and join us. Keep reading and commenting other your Web sites, Facebook Groups, Substacks and everywhere the resistance gathers. Our e-mail contact with you will be episodic, not relentless. You may unsubscribe at any time. What is the path to becoming a more powerful opposition to Trump? He has no actual policies other than his own self-aggrandizement. Trump's “policies,” are more expressions of vindictiveness and vituperation than policies. These is a version of the principles that we believe should guide us: 1. The 90M Americans qualified to vote who did not vote in 2024 are the essential source of the votes we need to win. Trump won 30% of eligible voters in 2024, Harris 28%. The winner by a landslide was Did Not Vote, with a whopping 42% of the total. That is the pool of potential votes from which we can find our victory margin. There is no reason to believe these people are immune to the techniques used to activate and engage consumers of politics, even for those for whom politics is of little interest. Democratic professionals leave voter registration to volunteers at tables in front of grocery stores, where they occasionally find a new Democrat. Consultants sneer at voter registration, on the assumption that anyone without enough motivation to register won’t turn out to vote anyway. We think that logic is behind us, gone the way of whistle stop tours and smoke-filled back rooms. What is needed is a massive $1B effort – as much as Kamala Harris had to spend on her campaign – to get a few tens of millions of them to vote. No one is going to change the minds of the Wacko-American community or their wealthy yet hidden overlords,, but we do not need to. We need to win more votes, and for the votes to be counted honestly and fairly. 2. The Internet is a useful place to organize but not a place for effective political action. The one and only place for that is in the streets, and one street in particular – the Main Street of America's capital, Pennsylvania Avenue. We have marched down this traditional parade route before to great effect, to promote civil rights and oppose the Vietnam war. This is how we showed the self-satisfied and apolitical majority that in unity we could destroy racist policies and an immoral and futile war. Across history and culture this is how fascist regimes have been forced to give up power. The local events organized by Indivisible and the Fifty-Fifty One movement and others were breathtakingly brilliant,. Several million people gathered peacefully. They did not provoke a violent reaction and were not disrupted by agitators. There were and no injuries or fatalities. This is a remarkable achievement, but it needs to take place in the capital and in the eyes of the nation, not distributed among the capitals of the states. If Trump wants confrontation give it to him with peaceful tactics that will win others over to our side. 3. We cannot waste time and energy on approaches with little chance of success. By that we mean gently turn activists away from calls for impeachment or constitutional amendments and in the direction of more meaningful tactics that produce crowds of unprecedented size. But rallies that bolster our resolve are not enough. We have to be courageous and absolutely relentless -- the Freedom Riders of our era, the occupation of campus buildings, every non-violent challenge to authority we can produce. 4. We are not yet using all the assets we have to mobilize: We have Hollywood celebrities, famous athletes and musicians, writers, scholars and all manner of people who can draw a crowd. If we do not do this no one will, and we will keep contesting elections that give Republicans a profound advantage. The Republican strategy has been and will continue to be to shrink the electorate, making the voting population significantly whiter and wealthier than the population at large. We can effectively rally against this. 5. Voting integrity is paramount: Voting is and has always been under the purview and legal authority of the states, who pass the administration of elections onto counties. This diffuse system makes it difficult to hijack, but its collapse and corruption are not entirely impossible. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are but two wealthy Republicans attempting through technology to use their companies to intervene, to purposely miscount the votes. This is now quite well documented, if not well reported. For all of Trump's malevolence his effort to undermine voting rights is perhaps the most consequential. Many astute and agile political analysts are helping Democrats to Democrats and their collaborators to this imperative. If everyone who is eligible came out to vote the Republicans Party would vanish from the scene. We may not be able to get everyone, but if even 3/4 of the eligible voters turned out and their votes were honestly tabulated we'd win. The Republican effort to prevent citizens from voting is vile. 6. Ignore the commercial news media, whose job is to defend the status quo. In the last generational uprising we had FM radio, which had yet to be captured by the big media companies. Now that is gone. We now have memes and the Internet, but it is not at all the same effect. The corporate media – either news or entertainment – is generally run by commercial imperatives and protest music is no longer allowed. They are so compromised and willing to capitulate to even stupid blackmail they now act against their own interests. Steve Colbert is first in his time slot, and they cancelled his show without even coming up with an idea of what to replace it with. Trump’s wild allegation that an interview with 60 minutes had been doctored was the empirical foundation of his blackmail. Trump’s underlings were prepared to block a corporate merger. That's a nice $9 billion company you've got there, said Trumpian extortionists. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it.l Corporate decision-makers now actively control the news organizations they own, including but not limited to the Washington Post, once a beacon of liberty and speaking truth to power. It now squelches truth and caves to power. This list is not exhaustive and anyone can modify and add to it. Your mileage may vary. However, if you are inquiring why this site is here and what are our goals and objectives, now you know.