Tuesday, February 27, 2024

#58 / Confidence Is infectious. So Is Defeatism.

 


Robert Hubbell, pictured, writes a daily blog on Substack. He calls it the "Today's Edition" newsletter. On Monday, February 26, 2024, Hubbell titled his blog posting, "Democrats should be gaining confidence."

I am a subscriber to Hubbell's blog, which provides a daily review of national politics. You can click here for an explanation of how Hubbell puts together his daily blog postings. 

I thought that Hubbell's statement - comandeered for the title I have placed on my own blog posting today - was worth highlighting. It really is true that "defeatism" is infectious - and please be aware that the infectious disease of "defeatism" can be truly deadly in the political arena. The national media do not necessarily give readers a clear understanding of what's going on, so here is a comment by Hubbell that is worth thinking about:

When Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary two weeks ago with 96.2% of the vote, the NYTimes called his victory an “uncertain measure of wider enthusiasm,” but when Trump won only 59.8% of the vote in the GOP South Carolina primary, the Times proclaimed Trump delivered “a crushing blow” to Nikki Haley! 

Let's not get "overconfident," though. Hubbell's message is designed for those who believe that reelecting Donld J. Trump as president would be a political disaster, and neither undue confidence nor feelings of incipient "doom" are appropriate. Besides understanding that we are routinely seduced into feelings of "defeatism," which we need to discard, we also need to understand the following points, as Hubbell has outlined them in that February 26th blog post:

(1) No matter what happens, the general election will be a close race that will demand every effort we can muster.

(2) We can’t count on Trump to defeat himself. Instead, we must beat him, fair and square—which means winning by about 10 million votes to account for the embedded inequities in the electoral college system.

(3) We should be confident about Democratic chances in the fall—but not complacent. Confidence is infectious—but so is defeatism. Because we have reason to be confident, we should pass it on to others!

(4) Don’t believe the media’s negative spin on every story!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comment!