Guest commentary: The primaries are over, here’s to the losers
By Ross K. Goldberg
I cast my first ballot in a presidential election in 1972. My candidate lost.
Four years later, I voted for the other party. I lost again. In fact, in the 14 presidential elections in which I’ve voted, I have failed to even bat .500. Losing has taught me a lot about myself and even more about America.
Our Founding Fathers must have thought a lot about losing when they established our nation. Either that or they had a wicked sense of humor. Clearly, they didn’t want anyone to win too often. Or too easily.
How else can you explain three branches of government, two houses of Congress and an electoral college that has already twice this century made a loser out of the winner of the popular vote?
We are indeed a government of what George Will called the “half loaf,” getting, at best, half of what we want and then coming back later in hopes of gathering whatever partials of the remaining half we can.
A good life lesson for all of us to learn.
Four times in my lifetime I have watched the sitting vice president (Nixon in ’60, Humphrey in ’68, Gore in ‘00 and Harris in ‘24) preside over the Electoral College’s counting of the ballots and have to announce that they themselves officially lost their quest for the White House.
On three other occasions (Mondale in ’80, Quayle in ’92 and Pence in ‘20), I watched as the vice president announced that their ticket had lost and that he would no longer be just a “heartbeat away.”
In all seven of these painful instances, each loser did their job with a grace and dignity befitting their office and, in some instances, earned a level of respect beyond what they had previously achieved. So, in losing, perhaps they won a bit. Lesson learned.
I’ve been thinking a lot about losing recently with all of the primaries taking place this month. Most specifically, I’ve been thinking about the eight “legitimate” candidates who ran to replace Gavin Newsom as Governor.
Like a hungry person who keeps opening the fridge hoping that something worth eating will magically appear, voters in our state spent months hoping that someone worth voting for would show up, but instead we were left with a gaggle of wannabes who made us squint real hard to imagine entrusting any of them with the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Six have already lost and in November that list will grow to seven. Given the choices before the voters, maybe the fact that seven will lose is a blessing after all.
As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as winners, but for all our dreams of glory, losing is very much a part of our culture’s DNA and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have their oar in the river of reality.
Sinatra made a career singing “saloon songs” for losers and the public couldn’t get enough of it. Ray Charles’ and Billie Holiday’s versions of “Born to Lose” sold millions and at this year’s Academy Awards, one of the big stories was not “Sinners” winning the most nominations in Oscar history but rather setting the record for most Oscar losses.
Even our national pastime is a lot more about losing than it is about winning. The best teams in baseball lose more than a third of their games; baseball’s all-time winningest manager lost more games than he won and the greatest hitters fail seven out of ten times.
Perhaps all that losing is why so many Americans feel a lifetime romantic connection to the game, for they see in baseball and its travails an insight into their own souls.
With all this losing going on, you would think we’d gotten adjusted to defeat. But for many, dealing with loss is still as tough as biting into a cheap steak. As for me, I’m convinced that the reason stars seldom align is that life has a sly way of scrambling the constellations.
Still, I’ll continue to vote each election cycle with the hope of one day winning at least as often as I lose.
Until that day comes, I’ll still watch the winners give their obligatory victory speeches to ballrooms full of supporters, but my last toast each election night will go to the losers.
God love them all.
Ross K. Goldberg is writer and former public relations executive residing in Westlake Village. He is the author of three books, the latest being “Twelve Stories.” [email protected]
