How the pundits could cost us this election

| 9:09 am EDT September 1, 2020
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

The pundits have conditioned you to believe that you can only win if you sit there nervously fretting day while they keep telling you you’re going to lose. That’s nonsense. They just want to keep you tuned in for ratings. You win by volunteering, phone banking. Not by fretting.

If you go around talking about how your guy is going to lose, what you’re telling people is that there’s no point in volunteering or voting, because he’s going to lose. When you talk like this, you cost your own candidate votes. It’s literally how you lose an election.

But the pundits are desperate to keep you tuned in. TV pundits need ratings to stay on the air. Twitter pundits need their tweets to go viral. And the best way to get ratings and attention is to tell your own side they’re going to lose, so they’ll be too scared to look away from your punditry.

You have to take a step back to realize how messed up it is that the pundits have brainwashed you into actually believing that spending all day talking about how you’re going to lose is somehow a formula for winning. Have you ever heard the republicans use this bizarre strategy of obsessively talking about how they’re going to lose, even when they’re ahead? Nope. Because they’re not politically naive like we are. It’s why they win half the elections, even though they have nothing to offer.

Have you ever seen a football team that’s up seven points in the fourth quarter suddenly decide that they can only win if they spend the rest of the game obsessively talking about how they’re going to lose? Of course not. Because that would be a recipe for actually losing.

This isn’t about optimism or pessimism. It isn’t about vigilance or complacency. It’s about the clear damage that you do to your own side’s chances of winning, when you spend all day telling your own side that you’re going to lose. Whatever that is, it’s not “vigilance.”

Imagine being on a battlefield in a war, trying to fight and win, and one of your own soldiers gets up in your face and starts yelling “we’re gonna lose” at you while you’re trying to fight. You wouldn’t tolerate that for a second. So why do we tolerate it in the Resistance?

The pundits have convinced many of you that there’s something virtuous and helpful about running around screaming about how you’re going to lose. But they only tell you you’re going to lose because they know it’ll keep you tuned in, drive ratings. They’re playing you for fools.

You can’t point to a single election – ever – where talking about winning has somehow caused you to lose. That’s sure as hell not what happened in 2016, where the results matched the final polling averages within the margin of error, proving there was no “complacency” involved.

If anything, when a candidate is ahead by eight points Iike Biden is, they often end up winning by an even larger margin. You know why? People in the middle like voting for the guy they think is going to win. Bandwagon effect. Talking about how you’re winning is an important strategy.

You want to win? Turn off MSNBC, turn off Twitter, and go volunteer or phone bank for Biden. That’s how you actually win. If you’re so brainwashed by the pundits that all you can do is sit around talking about how we’re going to lose, then you’re the one who will make us lose. Please don’t take that bait.