As soon as the election results started going in favor of Obama, people who dislike him began to react. Some of them responded like mature adults. The rest of them behaved like a collection of spoiled children and crazy people. Donald Trump tweeted craziness. Known pundits cried. People on Facebook bemoaned the Death of America. At a college in Mississippi, they had a protest of about 400 people who shouted racist things and chanted political slogans.
When you lose a political campaign, the proper response is to behave like a mature adult. Any other response, no matter how much you want to do it, is only hurting your cause. The thing is, in politics, or in any other realm where you are trying to influence others, every action to take is going to be assessed. You will not only be considered on how you win, but also how you handle losing.
As I have written before, the vital key to any political philosophy is the ability to communicate your ideas to others. You are always communicating something. However, if you react in emotional ways, this most often will not be your intended communication.
Our society values people who lose with dignity. We value people who fail in their objective, but gain insight from their loss. In many ways, this is the definition of the 'try hard' spirit of Americans. When we lose, this is when we show our truest colors and strength. If, in these moments, we are able to respond with poise and consideration for the situation, we will communicate that we are confident, strong, and wise.
If we blame others, if we insult our opponent, if we demand things be changed so that the odds are in our favor, or if we throw cry fits in public, we communicate that we are spoiled children who are too irrational to really be making decisions for others. We're not showing passion. We're not displaying righteousness . . . we just look like brats.
This kind of behavior isn't just detrimental on a communication level. It is also detrimental to our own ability to properly assess our mistakes. Failure is still a step towards our goals IF we analyze the failure for where we could change things next time. This requires a lot of honesty on our part and a lot of willingness to change. It creates a situation where we have to decide what is most important to us.
However, when we CAN admit to our mistakes and take responsibility for our failures, it shifts the power back into our hands. For example, if the mentality is 'Obama won because colleges educate people to be liberals,' then the Republicans become victims who can do nothing to alter the situation. Instead, they should turn the process around and look at it from another angle. 'The college educated people are liberals. How can we communicate our ideas to them in a way that will inspire them to vote for us? What can we change about our platform that will bring more people in?'
In the first line of though, 'the system is stacked against us,' there is very little the party can do besides be bitter angry victims. In the second line of thought, creative thinking can happen that will open up new ideas and bring in new voters. They can't change the fact that many people are liberals or independents. What they can change is how the communicate their ideas and find ways to appeal to these groups.
Admittedly, it's never easy to deal with rejection. When someone (or a lot of someones) take a stand that is against your ideas and wants, it is very, very difficult NOT to respond in an emotional way. However, rejection, even defeat, should not alter our quest for our goals. We have to move forward, no matter what. We cannot allow setbacks to give way to more setbacks, which is quite often the case when we react emotionally to our defeats. When things don't go our way, even in something as large as an election, we should handle the loss with grace, analyze where things went wrong, and alter our course to try again.
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