During the 2012 Republican primaries, I remember having a conversation with one of the Washington State caucus members who was telling me he wouldn’t vote for Newt Gingrich because he “can’t win.”

I guess the idea is that you shouldn’t vote for someone who can’t win. I’d heard this line of thinking for years prior to, and after, the 2012 election. It’s a self-defeating attitude resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Didn’t these people learn anything from Donald Trump?

Regardless of what you think of Trump, the fact is that everyone thought he couldn’t win. He won.

Instead of telling everyone your favorite candidate can’t win, how about convincing everyone who will listen why your favorite candidate will win.

For anyone who’s played any level of sports, this should be a fairly obvious formula. There’s no sense in competing if you’ve already given up or decided you can’t win. And this doesn’t just go for the candidates. It goes for their supporters, as well.

How many great candidates have lost before the election even started because their own base decided they needed to vote instead for the candidate they were told “could win?”

I always thought this was kind of obvious, but apparently, we’re going to keep shooting ourselves in the foot because too many people just don’t get it.