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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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