This is the sea change I’ve been waiting for
For years and years I’ve been preaching that sitting around talking about how we’re going to lose is a good way to indeed lose, because it lulls folks on our side into not bothering to put in the work required to win, and signals to fence sitters that they might as well just get on board with inevitable Republican rule.
When you’re dealing with a competitive race, the way we win is to talk about how we’re going to win. It’s not about optimism. It’s about motivation and effort. Talk of winning motivates everyone on our side to go out and put in the kind of work required to win. And it sends a signal to fence sitters in the middle that they should get on board with our winning movement, because the other side is a bunch of losers.
For the most part the Democratic Party understands this concept and tries to employ it. But the majority of the enthusiasts and activists on our side have generally not been able to grasp the concept, or at least not been able to abide by it. I’ve spent years trying to drill the point home that we need to talk about winning, but to my eternal frustration, I’ve only ever been able to get through to a fraction of the people on our side who need to hear it. The majority of people on our side have wanted to stare at their screens in fear, talk about how we’re doomed, and tell themselves that such behavior is “vigilance.”
And then suddenly Kamala Harris steps into the race and in three weeks she’s managed to convince just about everyone on our side that we should be talking about how we’re going to win, that we should feel joyful about it, that we should use it to motivate ourselves and others to make the kind of effort required to win.
Kamala Harris has accomplished in three weeks what I’ve been trying to preach for nine years. And I couldn’t be more excited. It is so thrilling to look through my timeline and see nothing but people who are talking about winning and are looking to put in the effort required to win.
Right now no one is looking to stare at their screen all day in panicked fear, so the media is having to move on from those tactics. Right now no one is buying the notion that talking about how we’re doomed makes us vigilant, and so the pundits who sell that schlock are having to find a different approach. Suddenly everyone is on board with this “winning” thing. To be clear, our odds of winning have gone up because we now think we can win. Again, it’s not optimism. It’s pragmatism.
Talking about how we’re going to win is what creates the momentum and environment that allows us to win. Imagine that. This is a sea change, and I’ve been waiting for it for a long, long time. I couldn’t be more thrilled. Now let’s go win this.
