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Why does our side so often lose? Most folks on our side would rather get to feel righteous anger and lose, than win. Take the Matt Gaetz saga over the past month, which has been a series of wins for us, yet most folks on our side are still angrily ranting about it in defeatist fashion (thread):

For starters, when Trump nominated Gaetz, it was a clearly defeatible nomination (as proven by the fact that it was defeated). But instead of trying to defeat the Gaetz nomination, most folks on our side skipped straight to angrily ranting about Gaetz being AG, as if it was a done deal.

Far too few of us were trying to help the Democrats defeat Gaetz. Most folks on our side just immediately presumed the loss and moved on to ranting about the presumed loss. Which makes it that much harder for the rest of us to fight and win.

Then we defeated Gaetz,m, and the Ethics Committee made clear it would use the threat of releasing the report to keep Gaetz from coming back to the House. Huge win for us. We got rid of him entirely! Yet most folks on our side just angrily ranted about how the Gaetz report wouldn’t be released.

Most folks on our side were once again eager to spin a win into a loss just so they could feel righteous defeatist anger and rant about it. Which totally stomps all over any momentum we got from the win over Gaetz. No wonder we can’t control the narrative. Our narrative is always “we’re losing!”

Then we got lucky and House Republicans released the Gaetz report after all. The people who had been ranting in defeatist fashion about the report being buried were now getting what they wanted! So what did they do? Skip straight to ranting about how Gaetz “got away” with what was in the report.

The kicker is that if Gaetz were arrested tomorrow, these same folks on our side would switch to ranting about how long it took. And if Gaetz were given 20 years in prison, they’d rant about how it wasn’t 30 years. Literally anything that happens, nothing but defeatist ranting.

If all we ever talk about is how we’re always losing, we come off as a bunch of losers, and NO ONE will want to be on our team or fight alongside us. Not even the people who agree with us. Because we keep telling them our side is a lost cause that always loses.

How can we fix this? Reject the notion that defeatist ranting is somehow “activism.” It’s actually surrender. Stop spinning wins into losses. Start spinning wins into even bigger wins. Be seen as winners who can fight and win battles, so more folks will want to join our cause.

Stop sitting around ranting in defeatist fashion about the Democrats. Start fighting alongside, and amplifying, the Democrats. Most battles consist of the Democrats going it alone, while folks on our side whine about the Democrats. No wonder we can’t win!