On Monday I saw a bunch of people on Bluesky mentioning and praising this essay by Andrea Pitzer. It’s quite good. I recommend reading it. It’s about the recent podcast discussion between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates. And that conversation turns a lot on the much-derided column Klein wrote about Charlie Kirk and how “Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way.”
Regular readers know that I have a number of enduring disagreements with Klein. They’re actually more and less than disagreements. They’re more like dispositional disagreements. Pitzer says up front that a lot of people are dumping on Klein now and she’s not trying to do that or at least not add to that. (And I second that for what I write below.) What she sets out to do is explain why she thinks Klein is “lost” in the present moment (a point Klein actually agrees with) and, secondarily, why Coates, whether you agree with him specifically, is not. Again, it’s worth reading Pitzer in her own lucid words rather than just my synopsis. But I would summarize it thus: Pitzer says that Klein has something called “bright-kid syndrome,” by which she means the idea that a smart and hyper-educated young(ish) person like Klein can and should come up with a prescription or fix to the ills he sees in front of him. It’s not quite like the “one weird trick” of memeland. But it’s kind of like that, inasmuch as it rests on the assumption that the intractable and overwhelming can actually be solved if you think about it hard enough, if you have enough cleverness and ingenuity.
Pitzer argues that Coates doesn’t have this problem because he’s operating in a specific intellectual tradition and theory of history which gives him a context in which to understand the present moment. Critically, it also gives him an understanding that sometimes — often — things are simply bad and won’t get better for quite some time.
There are a lot of different dimensions to this critique. I’ll simply say that she captures my basic underlying issue with Klein, which is the fascination with the clever idea over history and its intractabilities. But the whole discussion reminded me of something I’ve thought a lot about over the years, first late 2004 and 2005 but increasingly in this long Trump era: The precondition to winning any important political battle is the willingness to and the acceptance of the need to lose well.
I don’t like losing. This is one of the core features of my personality, private and public. A lot of politics gets discussed on a spectrum on principle, values, various ideas about purity contrasted with the importance of winning and whatever flexibility and pragmatism that is necessary to do that. If you’re familiar with my writing, you know I really don’t like political purism. There’s a certain kind of person whose interest and involvement in politics is heavily based around maintaining some purity of purpose. Their politics is geared around feeling a certain way about it, remaining clean as opposed to what they are actually doing, accomplishing etc. Purism — you know the thing I’m talking about whether you like it or not.
I note all this because when I talk about losing well I don’t mean some kind of noble defeat or some kind of perverse glory in remaining pure. This issue actually came up in a response Matt Yglesias had to Klein’s piece endorsing a hard Democratic line in a shutdown showdown. Klein listed off a number of arguments for a shutdown and then finished by saying that without a shutdown Democrats risked becoming “complicit” in Trump’s authoritarianism. Yglesias generally agreed with the other points but blanched at the “complicity” line and said something I totally agree with. His response was basically, fuck complicity. We’re not here for some ritual cleansing of ourselves, to be able to say we’re freed ourselves of any taint of Trump’s ill-rule. That’s meaningless. The only meaningful thing is do we have a plan for moving the ball forward, reducing the damage, laying the groundwork for future wins. Those are the only things that matter.
So what do I mean when I saw that being prepared to lose well is usually the prerequisite to winning well? I mean two things by it, first a recognition and second a calibration, a heuristic. First it’s a recognition that we live in history and sometimes — actually, a lot of time — you can have the right values, a great strategy and give it your all and still lose. That’s history and that’s life. It’s a recognition and a reminder that perseverance is a more important quality than cleverness or ingenuity.
The calibration point is a bit more idiosyncratic. If you lose an important fight you want to know you did everything you could. You left it all on the field, as they say. You don’t want to have made any dumb mistakes you’ll be kicking yourself over later. In a football game you can have a great strategy, the whole team gives it everything and you come up short. There’s no shame in that. Disappointing but no shame. You want your politics to work the same way.
The additional factor is that dignity — knowing who you are, not being lost — is an essential part of both winning battles and the perseverance that is necessary to endure and come back from defeats. The one thing you never want to do is fight over something important, see reverses, freak out, trade away all the things and the values that are most dear to and still lose. Then you’ve sort of lost everything. Your dignity, your sense of who you are … all in addition to the thing you were fighting over in the first place. If you’re on the wrong track and you ask yourself this question, you’ll know.
Democrats faced such a question in early 2005 when George W. Bush appeared to be on his way to phasing out Social Security in favor of a system of 401k-like private accounts. Responding with a flat “no” to any version of this kind of phaseout wasn’t just good political strategy, as none of it was popular. It also gave the Democrats a clarity of purpose and a mix of morale and motivation that added to their power. Various actors quickly bullied straggling members of Congress to adopt that line. It worked.
This isn’t or should be a straightjacket. There’s a certain kind of person who thinks that any accommodation of public opinion or tactical adjustment is a betrayal or abandonment of this or that group of value or whatever. That’s at least not how I see it. Or it’s not what I’m saying. When I ask myself these kinds of questions it’s really, Is this the most effective approach available? Am I focused on what’s most important?
I may be too much of an instinctive pragmatist that quizzing myself about my “values” feels too treacly or precious. How will I feel losing on these terms, with this approach is probably my version of it. If you look at what you’re doing and the beam is straight and true, you’ll know. And it’s not just a matter of being at peace with yourself, though that’s nice. You really don’t want to lose. Because losing may mean losing a lot. When that beam is straight and true it has a way of bringing everything into alignment. It makes people motivated. It drives morale. Because everything being in alignment, being prepared and ready to lose well is the best way to win too, and not just in some touchy-feely way. It aligns motivation, commitment and a sense of solidarity.