Reply #75: Your take on my use of defeatist is WAAAY off [View All]

What I don't like, and what I am in my rights to decry, is PURE negativity - even if that pure negativity constitutes a partial truth.

Notice that in calling Carlos defeatist (which he certainly was until he moderated his mantra), I never once disputed the truth of his assertions. hell, I gave him the assertion to actually make the truth worthwhile. Where Carlos was just repeating, over and over, that Bush would win, I suggested he 1) highlight the value of that assertion for strategy (better spending resources) and 2) offer positve alternatives (what other states would be better). If you offer only negatives, you are being defeatist, whether what you say is true or not. That has nothing to do with "suppressing the truth" or "ignoring" anybody, and I defy you to show me how it would function that way. What it "reminds you of' is, of course, a different matter, but worthless if it doesn't correspond to the present case at all.

We need fighters, not gloom and doomers. To the extent that carlos was later able to 1) note the relevance of his otherwise purposeless mantra for strategy and 2) offer positive alternatives, he himself proves that his constant harping on the negative could have been usefully supplemented.