Since when have programming languages ever been about winning? Lisp solves problems in a certain way the works well in certain cases for some people. Same case with awk or Perl or Python or whatever. Lisp may not be the language everyone uses for everything, but I find myself writing code in Clojure, Scheme, or Emacs Lisp because it makes sense to me. So what if that awk example is 2.5 lines longer than the actual version? It may be more work for my fingers but I still get to write it in Lisp.
I'm going to be one of the "stupid argumentative people" that he says are on comp.lang.lisp (which I had never actually heard of before) and say that Lisp users don't want Lisp to win. People who understand Lisp, as mentioned in another comment, that _they_ are going to be the ones winning in the end. Maybe this person wins with Perl. I don't. Ruby, Clojure, Prolog, and JavaScript meet my needs so I use them. Languages don't compete for adoption they solve problems.
I think Lion is beginner friendly, but I think they are going in the entirely wrong direction with the "iOS inspiration" thing. But it doesn't matter for me—I live in the world of the command-line and keyboard shortcuts.