In Defense of Losing
An ode to staying and fighting in a red state
This is the mid-week issue of Men Yell at Me, a newsletter about the places our politics and personhood collide. It’s written by me, Lyz Lenz, an author and journalist living in Iowa. This week’s newsletter was inspired by a conversation I had last week at an event, where someone asked me how I stay motivated to work in a state that has levied attacks on trans women. And that question, made me think about the art of losing and the people who stay.
In July of 2019, I stood in a crowded restaurant in Austin, Texas, for an event for the Blue Action Democrats. Women were everywhere, sipping on whiskey, eating sliders, bidding on the auction items, chatting, mingling, lacquered nails, smooth hair, white smiles. They were there to flip the state blue, and they were going to do it the Texas way — while looking good.
I was there to write a story for a magazine about the ways women were politically organizing on social media. In Texas, organizers were reaching out to Instagram influencers and mom bloggers, trying to educate them on issues like immigration and rights for trans kids, and door-knocking for local school board candidates. I spoke with the women who had organized networks of Facebook groups for Beto O’Rourke, who was currently using that digital infrastructure to run for president.
And in that moment, in 2019, in Texas, everything felt possible.
Just three months later, O’Rourke would drop out of the presidential primaries. And in 2020, Texas remained a solidly red state. I wrote the article, but it was never published. The caucuses were a disaster, and then the pandemic came. In the end, the women had been losers. They’d failed to win. So, was there even a story anyway?
On April 19, the New York Times published an article titled “Democratic Dollars Flow Once Again to Likely Lost Causes.” The article aired the widely held view that donating to campaigns that might not win is somehow a loss for political parties. And while winning is surely the goal of a campaign, it’s not the only measure of its success.
Horse-race journalism has made us all cynics, believing that the value of a single political race is now summed up in a win/loss ratio. Stacey Abrams in Georgia is a parable that proves the opposite. That proves you can lose, lose well, and come back winning.
In 2018, J.D. Scholten ran against Iowa Congressman Steve King. The campaign highlighted King’s history of racist comments. And while King narrowly won against Scholten, the race was close, too close. In 2020, King was successfully primaried by Randy Feenstra, who went on to win against Scholten. Scholten had lost, yes. But he’d done something important. He’d made his campaign about King’s racism and undermined King’s hold in his district. In an interview with me last year, Scholten explained that another thing he was able to do was create important voter rosters and connections.
He was surprised, he told me, at the lack of infrastructure Democrats had in western Iowa. People felt abandoned by Democrats and rightly so. They had been. No one wanted to stay and fight and risk losing.
There is an art to winning while losing. Criticizing candidates for losing misses how change happens. It’s not linear.
In Iowa’s first district, after losing her re-election bid for Congress, Abby Finkenauer decided to run for Senate. A decision a lot of political insiders and white male journalists side-eyed, but Finkenauer’s position was that she was going to fight and fight well. And fight for her state. Maybe it was a little bit of a long shot, but what else was there to do but pick yourself up and get back at it?
In New York magazine, Ed Kilgore, in an op-ed that contained the analytical depth of pond bacteria, suggested that Iowa Democrats are losing because of demographics. His analysis failed to take in the scope of human history. That politics ebb and flow and that forces such as racism, misogyny, and class affect all parties. And that an election cycle is just that, one small moment in time.
Listen, I’m not defending Iowa Democrats, who sometimes act almost afraid of winning because then they’d have to govern. Case in point: Despite encouraging polling, in Iowa, Democratic candidate for governor Diedre DeJear is struggling to raise money. She has no challengers in the primary. Probably because all those beloved golden boys of Iowa Democratic politics are too scared to run. They don’t want to lose.
It’s a vicious cycle. Women step up to fight in a vacuum where men won’t. They lose. Men label them losers and declare women can’t win.
There is also a point here to be made about who gets to lose and who gets called a loser? Finkenauer did lose her race, yes. But the other front-runner, Mike Franken, didn’t even make it out of the primary last time he tried to run for senate. So far, I’ve yet to hear anyone call him a loser. In fact, several white male journalists and Democratic pundits have told me that they think he has a better chance of winning, because he’s a man. No one wants to say this on the record of course. But it’s clear, men get to lose and get called winners. Women lose and are called losers.
It’s a vicious cycle. Women step up to fight in a vacuum where men won’t. They lose. Men label them losers and declare women can’t win.
There are other factors at work here too—racism, misogyny, class. Iowa’s media outlets have failed to even treat DeJear as a serious candidate. This newsletter is the only place that’s attempted a profile. The same was true of Theresa Greenfield’s campaign against Joni Ernst in 2020. At the time, I worked for a local newspaper, where journalists had failed to do a comprehensive profile of Greenfield. I did one. The race was closer than it should have been.
I know it sounds like loser talk. And it is. Winners lose all the time. And if you live in a red state, it does feel like a constant losing battle. Abortion access is all but impossible. There are sustained attacks on trans people. The social safety net is being undermined. It’s relentless. And sure, maybe it’s a losing battle, but the people whose lives and livelihoods are on the line just want someone to stay and fight.
People suggest moving, but moving is a luxury. Queer kids are born every day. Who is going to stay for them? A dear friend of mine, a queer woman in town, once told me that she stays because she can, because it’s her town too, because why should she move if she can stay and fight?
Columnist Molly Ivins, a Texan, suggested that Texas women were tough because they were used to losing all the time. “Texas is a fine place for men and dogs,” she wrote, “but hell on women and horses.”
I think about Ivins and those Texas women a lot. In a beautiful ode to the tough, rough Texas women, journalist Mimi Swartz wrote, “Sometimes all we can do in the face of loss is breathe in as much beauty as we can.”
Thirteen years ago today, Iowa issued it’s first marriage licenses for same-sex couples. It’s hard to remember that win today, in the midst of the passage of regressive laws. But it happened. A long hard battle that was won after so many many losses because people wouldn’t quit. Because there was too much at stake.
Beto O’Rourke is running again this time for governor. And he’s using that vast infrastructure of voters and organizers he created when he lost.
Further Reading: In 2018, Anne Helen Petersen wrote a great article about the women of the Beto campaign.
The Little Shell Tribe fought and lost for federal recognition for 156 years. We were a single vote away from "winning" in 2018, when one Republican senator decided to be a dick (because he is one) and block it. The following year we took a different path and pushed it through. Next up: Landback. We will lose a lot for a while, I'm sure, but we will outlast all the motherfuckers on this one too.
Living here in Iowa, and reading voices like yours, is a good reminder that if you don't fight, you've already lost, and like you say, losing an election doesn't mean it's all over. You have to build connections, maintain them, craft a coalition. And one election is just that.
And any time people say pithy things like "Forget Florida" or "That's just Alabama" or any variant of that, it makes me sad. Even in so-called blue or red states, a MINIMUM of 1/3 of the population is voting for the losing side most of the time, and they're people, too, deserving of the same rights afforded to our most privileged. The idea we should abandon people who lose an election is cold-hearted at best.
I don't think Grassley can lose, and I don't think Reynolds will, but I support anyone going against them, and DeJear is especially inspiring.