G: Yeah, silver lining implies a kind of moral detachment that doesn’t fit here — this situation involves ethical discomfort. You’re describing something that is strategically beneficial but substantively regrettable.
Here are a few candidates, by tone and usage context:

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1. Pyrrhic Advantage

• Definition: A gain that costs too much, morally or materially, to celebrate.
• Why it fits: Captures the sense that “I win politically, but at the expense of people I care about.”
• Example: “The layoffs gave him a Pyrrhic advantage — he could attack the incumbent’s policies, but his own district suffered.”

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2. Tragic Windfall

• Definition: A benefit that comes through others’ misfortune.
• Tone: Emotional, literary.
• Example: “The closure gave her a tragic windfall of voter sympathy.”

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3. Poisoned Gift (or Poisoned Boon)

• Definition: Something that appears advantageous but carries moral or practical harm.
• Example: “It’s a poisoned gift — it hands me the talking points, but it hurts my own base.”

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4. Hollow Victory

• Definition: A win that feels empty because of its human or ethical cost.
• Example: “It’s a hollow victory when the issue you warned about actually happens.”

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5. Regrettable Leverage

• Definition (original phrase): Practical and direct; conveys usefulness you wish you didn’t have.
• Example: “The policy’s failure gave me regrettable leverage in the campaign.”

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TL;DR:

If you want a concise, semi-formal term you can coin and own, “regrettable leverage” is the cleanest modern phrase.
If you want something that carries rhetorical weight or pathos, “tragic windfall” or “Pyrrhic advantage” both land more poetically.

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Would you like me to test which of these holds up best in campaign-style rhetoric (e.g., speech, debate, op-ed)?

G: Agreed —
“Poisoned gift” has too much historical baggage (often implying deceit or divine irony), and “hollow victory” implies a completed battle rather than an ongoing campaign.

Between your two finalists:

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Tragic Windfall

• Strengths:
  • Evokes emotional gravity — it sounds like something that shouldn’t have happened, even if it benefits you.
  • Works well in both moral and narrative frames: “It’s a tragic windfall when the people you represent have to suffer for your warnings to be proven right.”
• Weakness:
  • Slightly poetic; might feel too stylized in hard policy talk or internal memos.

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Regrettable Leverage

• Strengths:
  • Clean, modern, instantly intelligible.
  • Fits comfortably in campaign, journalistic, or analytical language: “The closures gave her regrettable leverage in the debate over tax incentives.”
  • Carries just enough emotional acknowledgment to sound human without losing professionalism.
• Weakness:
  • Slightly colder tone — more pragmatic than empathetic.

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If you want a term that you can actually use in writing or speech without needing to define it, “regrettable leverage” is the better long-term tool.
If you want something with literary resonance for a manifesto or reflective piece, “tragic windfall” hits harder emotionally.

In short:
Public-facing rhetoric → regrettable leverage
Reflective or essay tone → tragic windfall

G: Good question — I checked, and I didn’t find a widely-used, single term in political science or common usage that exactly matches the scenario you describe (i.e., “an opponent’s action harms our constituency, giving us campaign advantages we’d rather not have”).

Here’s a summary of what does exist, and how your scenario diverges — so you can judge how useful a coined phrase might be.

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✅ Existing related terms

• entity["scientific_concept","Opportunism",0]: The general notion of taking advantage of circumstances, even when principle or consequences for others might suffer. citeturn0search12
• Terms like “hollow victory” or “Pyrrhic victory” (not uniquely political) describe wins that come at too great a cost. (You already rejected “hollow victory” as turning-end rather than ongoing.)
• The literature also has many terms for political advantages/gains (e.g., “momentum,” “political leverage,” etc.) and for harm to constituencies (e.g., “disenfranchisement,” “constituency harm,” “collateral damage”) — but not a compact phrase that conjoins the two.

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❗ Why none fits exactly

• Your scenario involves advantage + harm to one’s own constituency (or the constituency you represent), which is a more specific interplay: you benefit politically from an opponent’s action, yet the action hurts your base (or would hurt them) and you don’t want to sound celebratory.
• Many existing terms either emphasize the harm (without the political upside) or the political gain (without the moral conflict).
• The nuance of “we can use this as campaign ammo—but we’d rather it not have happened” seems too specific to have a standard one-word label in regular usage.

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👍 Conclusion & Recommendation

Yes — you could reasonably coin your own term (e.g., your “regrettable leverage” or “tragic windfall”), because there appears to be no clean incumbent term that hits exactly that nuance.
That said, if you wanted to lean on existing vocabulary rather than inventing something, you could use a compound phrase like:

“opportunistic harm” – emphasises the political leverage gained (opportunistic) and the harm done (harm)
“advantage at a cost” – simpler, transparent, conveys the trade-off

But if you prefer a cleaner single term, I’d still favour “regrettable leverage” (as you had) because it seems to fill the gap.

If you like, I can survey political science literature (journals, books) to see if any archival term closer to your meaning exists (maybe more obscure) and send you the best candidates.