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Losing big is a part of winning big. Tom Brady lost at the Superbowl quite a few times, does that make him a loser? I think it's small-souled to look at a streak of big wins and cynically posture about failures and risk. Trump lost and then he kept fighting, which is the most important quality, which is that nice TV cliche that everybody talks about and no one really believes. His bankruptcies (large) set the stage for even greater success. That's the price of the game. But you just come down the escalator and fight and win and it's easy. And then you win some more. That's the attitude it takes to to imagine making America Greater Than Ever Before. It's the progressive forward-minded happy warrior (joy) that can imagine not just winning but winning more than anyone has ever thought possible. It's a big boast, it's uncouth and earnest and ridiculous. And it's the only way to really believe in the future, to unabashedly manifest a new golden age.
in my opinion trump should keep fighting about election fraud if he's correct, and not if he's wrong. the election fraud discourse over the past few years has both been, as far as i can tell, objectively very wrong, it's a classic example of a "conspiracy theory". IMO "conspiracy theory" is a very poor name, and what people really mean with that word isn't that something's a theory about a grand conspiracy, but a pattern of poor reasoning that leads certain types of people to wild, dramatic, and false conclusions. the election fraud isn't a "conspiracy theory" because it'd require a bunch of democrats to conspire to rig the election - that could totally happen! - it's a "conspiracy theory" because the reasoning people use to support it is of the kind people use to claim JFK vaccine CIA aliens.
the reason we have a lot of service workers, and not a lot of factory workers, is that the production of cheap consumer goods has gotten really efficient, and people (including you) would rather pay money for good service at a restaurant, or enjoyable content delivered via the internet, than for more cheap consumer goods. infinity percent tariffs on cars would not revitalize detroit!
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Losing leads to winning when you use it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Trump did that with his bankruptcies. He repositioned his businesses. He learned that Trump the brand was valuable, and leveraged that by going into simple businesses and using his name to increase the margin on them.
He didn't continue in a series of endless lawsuits against his creditors, claiming that the casinos were in fact entirely solvent and making tons of money.
I appreciate your point, but I continue to believe that Trump and Republicans as a whole would have done better to take the attitude typical of a team that loses a game on a bad call or an unlucky injury: we lost, but it doesn't reflect on us as a team, we're going to come back and win. Much as it pains me to give this example, the 49ers in 2022 lost to the Eagles in the NFCCG on terrible luck. Brock Purdy suffered a freak elbow injury on a sack in the first quarter, and their backup QB suffered a concussion a few plays later. Left with no quarterbacks, the 49ers were doomed. And the Niners maintained, to themselves and publicly, that while they lost the game they were the better team. And they came back in 2023 on a mission, demolished the Eagles in the regular season, and ran hot all the way to the Super Bowl. Which they lost to the Chiefs, but what are you gonna do?
If Republicans had collectively taken the attitude that the various rule changes had delivered a Biden presidency, but not a fully legitimate Biden presidency, and that in recognition of this Biden should limit his programs to change the country, and if he didn't then Republicans in Congress had a mandate to prevent him from doing so. That's a sophisticated, effective argument that would appeal to moderates. The alternative has lead to significant losses of winnable Senate and Gubernatorial races, that are likely to hobble the effectiveness of a second Trump term.
They cheated! This kind of "sophisticated" klaptrap is a losing argument, because it's not earnest, it's not real. You can't honestly believe that they cheated (that's declasse, that's gauche), it's naive to really believe something so simple, so let's make up this complicated elaboration so that there's ironic distance to keep us all healthy and detached. They didn't cheat, they just changed the rules in unaccountable and unprecedent ways that felt like cheating, but technically I'm not calling it cheating because I don't want to cast aspersions about the process, which I'm casting aspersions about, but in a "sophisticated" way (insert crying seethejak under a happy mask).
If they stole the election from Trump, and Trump didn't say they cheated, but made some "sophisticated" complicated argument full of triangulationg, people would be pissed! They would have lost all faith in Trump. He wouldn't have just lost a few "winnable Senate and Gubernatorial races," he would have been exiled from the party. The GOP would have learned that Trump has no teeth, and they would have felt happy screwing him out of a third nomination.
Meanwhile Trump has learned the lessons from 2020 -- there are huge Republican orgs now dedicated to training poll watchers and lawyers undoing the rule changes and votes. Trump actually knows a thing or two about this.
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