Most children learn quickly in the schoolyard or while competing in games that losing accompanies winning. Zero-sum – having it all, always, and never losing or having to give way to someone cleverer, smarter, bigger, or with better concentration in marbles or some other kind of contest is not common. Bullies exist, but they can be overcome by opponents working together.
Such lessons are the essence of democratic practice. Even in the schoolyard one learns to consult, to listen, to compromise, and to get ahead among one’s compatriots by accepting setbacks and re-deploying one’s talents, efforts, or objectives. The will of the majority prevails, especially at the micro-level of the small group. One learns to lose artfully, and to come back after defeats in games, in friendships, in gaining attention, and in overcoming one’s narcissistic preferences.
Democracy is impossible without the fundamental notion of sharing – of sharing high and low office, of alternating between those who espouse one view and those who espouse the opposite. Indeed, this nation and its democratic traditions have long been rooted in the unwritten acceptance of defeat as well as winning low and high position while persuading followers (and voters) that X policy and X goals are better for the nation and its citizens than Y policies and Y objectives. Zero-sum is the antithesis of democratic practice everywhere.
There is no hope for democracy if, Mussolini-like, one refuses to accept the will of the people as expressed through accepted methods of determining their choices, such as through casting ballots and counting them objectively. Hardly anyone in the modern history of our republic –until recently – has rejected voting results and asserted that the machines were manipulated or a class of voter were denied the ability to vote. Optical scanners of paper ballots enable instant and verifiable results; computer generated totals can be tested and verified, and even the exclusive use of paper ballots (the least desirable method) can be scrutinized carefully.
To maintain a democracy there must be elections and losers must accept defeat. Having won the popular vote in 2000, Vice President Al Gore was much too gracious in giving George W. Bush the presidency on the basis of Electoral College returns and a Supreme Court that narrowly preferred a Republican administration. But he did, putting as he said “country before party.” In the 2022 mid-term election, Adam Frisch conceded politely to pistol-packing Lauren Boebert despite the fact that he is behind by 0.17 percent in the vote totals (only 554 votes out of 327,000) and that by Colorado law a recount is mandatory.
Yet, in Arizona, Kari Lake, the Republican losing gubernatorial candidate, refuses to accept the fact that her vote totals were certifiably less than those of incoming Governor Katie Hobbs. Lake alleges that voters were kept from voting and poll-workers were biased, and so on, but none of that is true. As in years gone by, mechanical glitches were corrected and machines and humans at the polls all worked well and honestly. The winners won fairly and the losers lost, again, as and when they were rejected by voters. Democracy, as I wrote last week, remained resilient. Indeed, according to post-election analyses, a majority of voters rejected efforts to cripple our democratic beliefs and practices. That was a profound takeaway from the resounding democratic and Democratic conclusion to the mid-term elections
As outgoing Massachusetts Republican Governor Charlie Baker commented, “Voters want collaborative elected officials. They don’t want extremes.” Voters want candidates who represent “the fundamental tenet of democracy…a distributed decision-making model.” Republicans should “move past” Trump, he said.
Even Republican Senator Mitch McConnell agreed that learning how to lose was important. “We underperformed among independents and moderates because the impression of many of the people in our party and leadership roles is that they’re involved in chaos, negativity, excessive attacks.” The GOP “frightened” voters.
Voters certainly negated the refusal to embrace defeat while reiterating the American tradition of sharing – winning and losing in traditional ways. In other words, as Baker, McConnell, Republican Governor of New Hampshire Chris Sununu, and even Republican Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks all agreed, Republicans must again learn to lose graciously. The denial of the confirmed results of the 2020 presidential election was offensive, dishonorable to the Constitution and their oaths of office, and ultimately self-defeating.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another Republican, put it well when he concluded: Republicans needed forward looking leaders, not those “staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.”
Kari Lake and an orange-faced denier in chief must now learn what the mother of Jack Welch, the tyrannical boss of General Electric, taught him early. When he was a talented teenager playing hockey, he scored his team’s only two goals in a critical contest against another high school. But his team nevertheless lost. In a tantrum he tossed his hockey stick against the walls of the arena, stalking off to the lockers. His mother, watching, stormed after him into the boys’ locker room. “She grabbed him by the jersey.” “You punk, she yelled. “If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win,” she shouted at her son in front of his half-dressed teammates. “If you don’t know this, you don’t belong anywhere.” (from William D Cohan, Power Failure, the Rise and Fall of an American Icon, 2022)
The final word in this day’s Substack newsletter belongs to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “Trump exploited every dark division and base impulse he could find. He would rather blow up our democracy than admit he’s a loser, and that makes him a traitor.”
We need losers who know how and when to accept defeat -- the lesson of Jack Welch’s mother. Only then can we move forward democratically, and only then will the union survive.
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Happy Thanksgiving to all. We have much for which to be thankful politically and electorally. May your turkeys be tasty and your cranberries and stuffings delectable. And may honor and decency thrive.
Let us hope, too, that Turkiye in 2023 becomes less of an international turkey, politically, and ceases bombing Kurds.
Thank you. I very much appreciate your articles. This says so much.