I do not want to rehash all the points covered under "Worse is better" - [A] largely because I dont think I could ever write as eloquently as Richard Gabriel. You are right C has "won" for some value of won - in the sense that most large systems currently in existence have C at their core. From another point of view lisp has "won" because at least in the circles I roll the languages used today are closer to lisp (dynamic languages with garbage collection) than they are to C. In any case neither you or me could take any credit for what our language ancestors (Kernighan, Ritchie, Steele, Pitman etc) accomplished in their day.

[A] - http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html