Lisp lost because none the the Lisperati came down from on high and deigned to explain how to use it for tasks running on the 1980s microcomputers.
Lisp also lost because the 1980s Lisperati spent all their time explaining lists and recursion over and over instead of explaining hash tables, vectors, and iteration.
Somehow, Lisp lost out to pathetically slow BASIC interpreters and C compilers that you had to swap floppies continuously for hours. That is a stunning level of fail.
