You and Your Candidate Have Lost. Now What?
Losing a political campaign can be traumatic. I know, I’ve been there. If you are the candidate, you have put all your life and energy into the effort for a year or more. If you are a volunteer you have spent hours working to make real your vision of what should be. The votes are counted. You and your candidate have lost. What now?
There are always more losers than winners. But, the answers today’s losers give will shape the future.
One can blame outside forces: the party establishment, the corporate media, big money, prejudice, or the voters themselves. The game is rigged. What’s the use? Putting the blame on others leads to anger, rejecting political activity and dropping out, except for denouncing the “system”. That road leads nowhere.
The alternative is to ask: what could we do differently next time? What would make our message more effective; resonate with more people? How will we win next time?
Two prominent supporters of Bernie Sanders differed in their responses to setbacks.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, was quoted in the New York Times, “I come from the lens of an organizer, and if someone doesn’t do what you want, you don’t blame them — you ask why. And you don’t demand that answer of that person — you reflect. And that reflection is where you can grow.”
Harvard professor Cornel West, appearing at a rally in Michigan to increase support for Sanders among black voters expressed his “disappointment” that his “own black people” had brought Vice President Joe Biden “back to life.” “Oh, I am so disappointed,” he was quoted by the Times. “What has happened to our black leadership? Some have just sold out.”
Even in real life, accusing someone of selling out is not likely to bring them to your side.
Conflict between “Us” and “Them” has been an underlying theme for Sanders. In an interview with the Times, he said, “Look, what we’re trying to do is take on the entire political establishment. We’re taking on the entire corporate establishment, the entire media establishment. … We’re taking on everybody!” It is hard to build a majority if you are taking on everybody.
In contrast, Marie Newman who has the same policies as Sanders, was endorsed by Sanders and was supported by many of the same groups that supported Sanders, won her congressional primary this year against an incumbent in a district long dominated by Chicago ward politics.
In an interview with the Times, she described her campaign as one that welcomed everyone. Where Sanders sought conflict, she sought connections.
“I believe in working families, health care for all, and making sure that we have a livable wage. … I think that I’m a blend of the entire party. … Everyone likes to talk about the party in terms of two or three wings. I think there’s probably 50 wings, if we’re all being honest with one another. We’ve always been a mosaic and where we all connect is around working families and workers.”
Abraham Lincoln, the consummate American politician, recognized that connection precedes persuasion. In an early speech to the homefolk in Springfield, he said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him you are his sincere friend.” That is the way to his heart, “which when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one.”
Saul Alinsky, the “radical” Chicago community organizer during the 1950s and 1960s, would tell young voters of today who are thinking of dropping out, what he told the youth in 1968 who were deeply disappointed in the national Democratic convention’s support of the Vietnam War, “Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.” Many did just that and a peace candidate was nominated at the 1972 convention.
Alinsky’s advice in Rules for Radicals is still good for all of us not content with today’s politics. “It is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system. . . . Effective organization is thwarted by the desire for instant and dramatic change. . . . To build a powerful organization takes time. It is tedious, but that’s the way the game is played—if you want to play and not just yell, ‘Kill the umpire.’”
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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