The Case for Trump 2024: Winning Is Generally Better Than Losing

Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon very succinctly lays out his political agenda: Gain power for the purpose of “crushing our enemies and rewarding our friends.” https://t.co/zfWTrxWabm pic.twitter.com/ldUk4GnvhT

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 25, 2024

Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon wants Christians to hate their enemies and to cast righteous votes until voting can be done away with. https://t.co/ghr7olRNei pic.twitter.com/PkMNpQbDnJ

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 1, 2024

You must stand by your principles. https://t.co/EHSOxPxez4

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) August 2, 2024

No compromise means no compromise.

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) August 2, 2024

Over the past 12 hours, I’ve had a series of productive conversations with members of the Trump’s team and I am confident he will be the strong ally gun owners need to defend our Second Amendment rights.

My comments made last night were ill-informed and unproductive. I’m 100%…

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) August 2, 2024

This is a highly controversial opinion among activists.

Generally speaking, I believe that winning is better than losing. Positive energy is more attractive than negative energy. We have experienced Trump winning and losing.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, the positive energy brought in lots of new people into this scene. When Donald Trump lost in 2020, the movement contracted and never recovered. The cynicism, snark, negativity and depressive whining of blackpilled activists is off putting. I say this as someone who fell into that trap for a number of years. I think a lot of that excessive criticism of Trump’s first term was justified, but it is also something that people are sensitive to because no one wants to listen to a buzzkill. There is a happy medium between pollyannaish 4D Chess plan trusting and exaggerated blackpilling.

It is a good thing to have principles to guide your actions, but your principles can also be weaponized against you. The Alt-Right used to make fun of the True Cons with their Principles who were addicted to losing. Instead of using their principles as a practical guide to nudge the public to move toward their positions while understanding that politicians and the public do not share their principles, conservative activists became obsessed with purity spiraling and displaying their principles to other activists. Losing was interpreted as an opportunity to bask in the glory of defeat. Elections became less about public policy preferences than tests of personal piety. Conservatism turned inward on itself. These Beautiful Losers ended up looking ridiculous to people like us who were outside of their culture.

I started working on this article last night before the news broke that Kyle Rittenhouse had announced that he was not voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 election because of his record on the Second Amendment. Rittenhouse has since reversed himself on X after stirring up a huge backlash. It is a classic example though of how activists are the biggest obstacle in the way of their own objectives. In this case, Donald Trump saved gun rights activists from their own goofball political instincts.

If Donald Trump had lost the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton would have appointed three Supreme Court justices, which would have decisively tilted the Supreme Court to the Left. Those Supreme Court justices would have all been pro-choice in the mold of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Roe would have never been overturned and the pro-life cause would have been lost for a generation. Abortion would be legal in every state. Similarly, gun rights would have been restricted instead of expanded in the Bruen decision. The Supreme Court would be expanding gun control instead of building on the Heller decision. Donald Trump’s ban on bump stocks was just overturned by the Supreme Court. Neither pro-life or Second Amendment activists have gotten everything they have wanted from Trump’s Supreme Court, but the court has shifted in their direction on these issues which is a source of bitter resentment on the Left.

The same is true of other issues which are important to activists. There is trade policy and industrial policy where Trump challenged the reigning neoliberal orthodoxy in the 2016 election. Trump killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both parties now agree on using tariffs and industrial policy to protect American manufacturing from foreign competition. There is foreign policy where Trump negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan which was completed by Biden. There is immigration policy where the pro-immigration side lost the debate and comprehensive immigration reform died. Trump pushed for lower legal and illegal immigration levels throughout his presidency and finally closed the border in 2020. Affirmative action was shot down at the Supreme Court last summer. It wasn’t a slam dunk, but it was a modest win.

In a lot of areas, especially on foreign policy, trade and immigration, the Trump administration pushed in one direction and Congress and the courts pushed back in the other. Tax cuts were uncontroversial on the Right and sailed through Congress because there was no resistance on the Republican side. Withdrawing American troops from Syria was much more controversial than “repealing and replacing Obamacare” although that effort ended in defeat as well. Activists blamed Trump for his failures in this area when the real problem was the sheer number of Reaganites in Congress and the executive branch. John McCain singlehandedly defeated Trump’s attempt to repeal Obamacare and Trump’s infrastructure plan similarly went nowhere because of congressional opposition in his own party. The president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally impose his agenda on the country. Obama, Trump and Biden have all been thwarted by the same obstacles in Washington like the courts and the Senate filibuster.

If Donald Trump had lost in 2016, we would be living in a different, more unpleasant political reality than we are today. Without Trump, Tucker Carlson would have never had his show. The Overton Window would not have moved to the degree that it has on the Right. Ted Cruz would have likely been the Republican nominee in 2020. Conservatism, Inc. as it existed before Trump would have held on longer. Everything would definitely be worse off on the policy front and we would be set further back in the culture. Activists routinely compare their disappointments with Trump to an imaginary alternative future instead of to the timeline we likely would have had gotten in the eighth year of President Hillary Clinton.

Unfortunately, some of the remnants of the Alt-Right seem to have developed a culture of losing. They imagine a world where they lose their way to National Socialism or to an Apollonian Global Empire. They believe losing is a winning message. Millions of people will get so frustrated and angry with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that they will have no choice but to turn to people who want to lose some more. They are not alone in this as conservatives and libertarians similarly and laughably imagine a world in which they have lost their way to the total nationwide abortion ban or a world in which the Second Amendment is sacrosanct or a world in which Ron DeSantis is the president or the Fed has been abolished, etc. Abolitionists believe sheer conviction is sufficient to get what they want.

If you see yourself as someone who has principles, you are likely a highly engaged political activist. You are probably middle class and college educated. Politicians and normies do not share your principles. Most people do not give a shit about your principles and never will. If you are trying to impress other activists by displaying your principles instead of changing political reality, which requires focusing on and influencing politicians and normies who lack principles, you are in a circle jerk.

Winning is still better than losing at baseline. Your political enemies agree to the extent that your pious self-righteous nonsense is an opportunity for them to advance their goals.

As usual, the point of this article is to explain my own thinking because otherwise you would not understand the shifts in my position. I am not telling you to vote for Donald Trump. You are capable of making your own decisions. This is my attempt to flesh out my own inner monologue.

1. The Right finally moves on from Trump in 2028

2. The Alt-Right has terrible political instincts

3. Joe Biden has been a sedative as president

4. Activist brain blinds us and creates prejudice against conservative normies

5. Trump is the leader because he is the best of the Republicans

6. “Worse is better” is a cope and was tried in 2020 and maintains the status quo

7. Voting is not a sacrament. Few know this

8. Voting is not going to change anything about Zionism in the next four years

9. Activists have the chance to ride the Trump wave without making the same mistakes

10. Activists are running out of material because the Overton Window has shifted so much

11. Donald Trump is a hunted dog who has been backed into a corner

12. Donald Trump is a divider, not a uniter and his legacy will ultimately be useful for us

13. Winning is still better than losing at baseline