I know what people mean by the phrase. It doesn’t materialize in the real world though.
There isn’t any value in the fact that you won the election when you spend the next 729 days losing and losing and losing, over and over and over again.
Between each election there are 730 days.
The reality is (to keep this with the original post in regard to pro-life issues) that the only reason Roe ended up being overturned at all was not really because of Trump. It was because of the annual March for Life. They kept the issue in people’s minds. They did the hard work. They did not stop for 50 years. The March for Life is the unsilent majority, and they won because they kicked silence onto the ash heap of history where it belongs.
To borrow from my earlier analogy: The March for Lifers were not up in the bleachers. Sitting. Watching. Pointing. Complaining. Perhaps holding a bag of popcorn.
They got down into the field. In participation, they won the championship that year.
Full disclosure: I have been to a March for Life in Washington D.C.
Seems like you’re defining the phrase differently. Whether the actions desired between elections occur is a different demographic. You seem to define the activists and what I am calling the silent majority to be the same people.
There is overlap to be sure but they’re not always the same folks.
Anyway, I think Littlejohn does a good job analyzing our current state.