About a month ago, I stayed up until 2 a.m. watching cable news. This isn't my normal mode: usually, I'm in bed by 10, and I never watch the television pundits. But that night, I couldn't look away. Heading into it, almost all of the people on the tv thought something else was going to happen. Then, as each new bit of data came in, you could see their faces initially register surprise, you could almost hear their internal dialogs figuring out how to smartly adjust, and then you got to see, in real time, how they managed to make their comment as if they'd known or understood all along what would happen. Some did this very well: you might call them the born liars; others struggled, much to my entertainment, they appeared more like real people. Cable news is usually boring because no one moves away from their practiced commentary. Election nights are one of the few times where they have to improvise to absorb unfolding reality and react to it in real time. I couldn't look away.
Once the dust settles, U.S. elections are the rare binary outcome: one candidate wins, the other loses. That simplicity hides the multitude of independent variables: the things that cause people to vote the way we do are almost as numerous as the number of voters. Pretty quickly after the result is known, punditry ossifies into conventional wisdom. While the ground of who should win is highly contested heading into the election, the reason why the winner won is settled pretty quickly. It's kind of like a sports contest: heading into the game, you can find interesting arguments about which team will win, and why and how, for almost possible outcome. As the gambler knows, those theories almost never pan out, yet, surprisingly quickly as the contest happens, the reason for the game's outcome seems almost as obvious as the final score. This is why postgame reports and recaps are so boring. It's also why, after the election, cable news returned to its usual dull state before any of its hosts and pundits even got a decent night's sleep.
I'm not sure anyone knew what would happen prior to the election; I'm virtually certain no one knows what the election means. The ground is entirely argued by partisans, whose interest in some explanation or rationale clouds any clarity of judgment. Back when I worked in politics, we would record multiple election outcome response videos. Once, we did the videos direct-to-camera. It was entertaining to watch our organization's leader easily switch between attitudes of "this was a loss" and "hey look, our side won!" and then, just as easily, pivot into the exact same spiel for what the election meant for our side and what we would do next. Win or loss, we received the same message and as a result would do the same thing. (That it was far easier to nail the talk track for the 'we lost' outcome suggests just how unproductive activists groups are set up to be.) My point is that you can't really trust either side to understand why theirs lost or won. The best we can hope for is for the sides to understand how to behave in the governing.
Upon losing an election, Winston Churchill said this:
It is the duty of every Englishman, and of every English party to accept a political defeat cordially, and to lend their best endeavours to secure the success, or to neutralise the evil, of the principles to which they have been forced to succumb.
Churchill is worth listening to: over more than six decades in the House of Commons, and between a few political parties, he had more than his fair share of chances to accept defeat (and, for that matter, victory). He had practice losing elections. In parliamentary democracies, losing elections is probably tougher than in representative democracies like the US. There, elections almost end politics as the ruling party does its job: to rule. Here, after elections, politics starts: to do anything meaningful, even appoint a cabinet, you have to negotiate with almost everyone else who was just elected. Our institutions naturally oppose each other. Yet, Churchill's advice could be useful.
What does it mean to use 'best endeavors' to 'secure the success' or 'neutralize the evil' of a newly elected set of principles? 'Best endeavors' seems to have to do with knowing your station, your place in whatever institution, and doing what the institutions requires and allows. Importantly, despite all of the rhetoric, the verb he chose sounds like real work, not just talking (or posting things online). Churchill's concept of 'neutralize the evil' is probably what American democracy does best: we have any number of chances to stop an agenda we don't like, from hearings and negotiations to endless lawsuits to midterm elections. I don't think he meant incessant, loud protestations of opposition. While parliamentary democracy certainly has room for protestations and even hostility (watch their question hour), looking at what Churchill did after losing, it's clear that he meant active work to bend the policies slightly in a better direction. The sense is, if we're going to get X, then how might we tweak it to make it not as bad as we think it might be?
The idea to 'secure the success' of something you didn't vote for is far harder for us to grok. When Trump was first elected, on his podcast, Tony Kornheiser tried to generically wish the new president well. It wasn't high praise, Tony's politics aren't rightwing, but he acknowledged that the political right had won, they had their president, and he wished the new administration success. The podcast guests jumped on him: Trump wasn't legitimate, was racist, and ought to be opposed on all fronts. This surprised Tony. He comes from an era where you tipped your cap to the person who beat you. It takes something most of us don't have to wish our political opponents success and to hope that what they accomplish is good. That this attitude is hard and rare makes it valuable.
For the reading this week, I have a few essays along these lines: knowing what your role should be (and shouldn't be) given your institutional position. The authors chide pastors for becoming partisans and journalists for becoming activists.
Reading
Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist
When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both.
Dear Journalists: Stop Trying to Save Democracy
Journalists who turn themselves into political activists inadvertently undermine democratic institutions.