President Calderón and his team were no longer Weberian state officials trying to establish the monopoly of violence within a given territory but opportunistic politicians trying to adopt a new strategy of damage controls: accepting responsibility for the violence in areas where president Calderón could persuade his subnational co-partisans to follow him in confronting DTOs while elsewhere blaming the violence on his political rivals -particularly leftist subnational authorities, who did not recognize him as a legitimate president, bitterly opposed his economic agenda, and were poised to become his main electoral challengers in the 2009 midterm legislative election.
El presidente Calderón y su equipo dejaron de ser funcionarios de un Estado weberiano, el cual en principio intentaría reestablecer el monopolio de la violencia, y se convirtieron en políticos oportunistas tratando de adoptar una nueva estrategia de control de daños: aceptar la responsabilidad de la violencia en áreas donde el presidente pudiera persuadir a sus copartidarios subnacionales de seguirlo en el enfrentamiento contra los cárteles y los grupos criminales, y culpar a sus rivales políticos por la violencia en otros lados, particularmente a gobernadores y alcaldes de izquierda.