“We’re gonna lose”
We need to stop talking so obsessively about what’ll happen if Trump wins. It’s good to periodically remind everyone of what the nightmare scenario would look like. But our side does it obsessively. In no other walk of life would you sit around talking all day every day about how you’re going to lose, and expect such talk to somehow help you win. It’s not just psychological. It’s direct sabotage.
When our entire messaging becomes “we’re gonna lose,” all it does is tell everyone that our side is doomed. Passive folks who are on our side will see no point in bothering to vote if they’re being told we’re going to lose anyway. Activists on our side will see no point in putting in the work required to drive turnout, if they think it’s all for nothing. Does the ice cream counter get more people to line up for ice cream by falsely announcing that there’s no more ice cream? Of course not. This stuff is obvious in every arena of life except, for some reason, politics.
There are specific races – plenty of them – that we are in fact going to lose. Demographics always dictate this. We’re not winning a House race in rural white Alabama, just as surely as the Republicans aren’t winning a House race in Hollywood. And we should acknowledge this up front, so everyone on our side knows where to put their time and resources.
But when it comes to competitive races, you’d darn well better be talking about how you’re going to win them. That’s how you rally people such that you can win the winnable races. You don’t scare more people on your side into voting by telling them that they’re going to lose. You’re just telling them not to waste the time and effort to stand in line and vote.
You don’t see Democratic Party politicians and candidates talking about how they’re going to lose. They’ll lay out the various dangers that Trump and the Republicans pose. But then they say “and this is why we’re going to win.” It’s to remind people that yes, this is a winnable battle worth fighting for, so they’ll go out and fight it.
But while the Democratic Party understands effective messaging, most Democratic-leaning activists don’t. They see that their “we’re gonna lose” diatribes get more retweets and engagement, so they decide to make more of these kinds of posts, and then they just tell themselves that it’s good messaging.
But in reality the nonstop “we’re gonna lose” stuff serves to cost our side votes, and drowns out the effective messaging coming from the Democratic Party – even as that same “we’re gonna lose” crowd accuses the Democratic Party of being bad at messaging.
We have got to get away from this obsession with “we’re gonna lose, here’s what Trump’s going to do when he’s back in power.” That’s not vigilance. It’s not effective messaging. It’s surrender. We need to stop surrendering like this. Our messaging should always be along the lines of “This is what Trump and/or the Republicans would do, which is why we’re going to win.” Otherwise we’re just costing ourselves votes.
