I remember my first few weeks fishing a small kettle pond I had discovered not far from my house on Cape Cod. Using a pumpkin-green Senko worm with a chartreuse tail rigged weightless Texas-style I was catching 3-5 nice size bass on average, every day. Cast it out, let it slowly sink, get a hit, and reel ‘em in. Easy. Then I started hooking the monsters: 8-10 pound bass from the middle of the pond, and I just as quickly lost them as they thrashed, lept, ran for the deep, and snapped my line. One day, as I was fighting what I could only assume was the biggest bass in the entire lake, a fellow angler yelled out across the pond: “loosen your drag!” At that moment I realized that all this time I had the drag on my reel tightened down so hard that there was no give whatsoever. When a 10-pound bass took a run, it was a simple matter of physics that my 6-pound test line would snap. I quickly reached down to let off the drag and my line started screaming out, pulling yard after yard off my reel. When the fish stopped running I quickly reeled the line back in. This went on for the next ten minutes: run and reel, over and over, tightening the drag here, loosening it there, until the fish (and I) were tired and I could safely land my monster bass. Later, I came to realize that there are a lot of factors involved in setting the proper drag: the strength of your line and whether the fish has a soft or hard mouth, but that day I learned a very important lesson about resistance: you set your drag too high and you’ll snap your line, but if you set it too low the fish will take it all and you’ll be left with an empty reel. You need to always be adjusting your drag
Activists, young activists in particular, can be uncompromising. The only victory is total victory, and unless your adversary capitulates to every one of your demands, then the campaign is a loss. Consequently, uncompromising activists chalk up a lot of losses. Mainstream political operatives, particularly moderate ones, do the opposite: they give away everything at the first sign of resistance and are left with nothing at the end. The trick to being an effective activist is to gauge how much resistance you need to apply to get the result you need. Give your adversary too much line and you’ll give away all your power. Don’t give an inch and they’ll dig in their heels. This calculation depends upon your strength, and it depends on your adversary. Potential allies need a little room to play, unyielding enemies need to be met with maximum resistance. As I write these words the current President, who lost both the electoral and popular vote, is making baseless claims about stolen elections and demanding that the vote go his way. His opponents, who in elections past have been prone to capitulate at the first sign, have decided not to give an inch. It’s the right amount of resistance. The outgoing president has a hard mouth.