Attention: Candidates who lost on Aug. 8
So here’s your dilemma: You’ve been lying low since election night, and you know you’re going to run into your political acquaintances soon. You want to give them a good excuse why you lost, but a week after the primary, all the best ones have been taken.
What to do?
Here are some excuses I guarantee no one has heard. Ever.
– “I know I said I would knock on every door in the district, but it was really hot this summer, and I’m pretty lazy.”
– “I put together a campaign plan and a budget because everybody said I had to, but I really had no intention of raising that kind of money.”
– “I knew I wasn’t going to win, but I was mad at (elected official/candidate/party faction) and I wanted to show them that they should have paid more attention to me.”
– “The differences between me and my opponent were clear, and the people chose my opponent’s views over mine.”
– “I realized a couple months out that I was probably going to lose, so I just stopped asking people for money and told people I was going to run a ‘grassroots campaign.’” (1)
– “My opponent just plain outworked me.”
– “I had no idea how much time and effort goes into a campaign like this, and I was in way over my head.”
– “I’m really not that interested in what a (office sought) does, but I like going to public forums and having people listen to me.”
– “My plan was to get a lot of (opposing party) voters to take a (my party) ballot, but the ones that told me they would were just being polite and wanted to end the conversation.” (2)
And finally, the most likely to be true:
– “Honestly, I had no business being in the race in the first place.”
(1) See II.
(2) The political boneyard is filled with candidates who thought they could fundamentally alter the makeup of their party’s primary voter base. It doesn’t happen.
(Note to John Loudon, Jack Jackson, and Mark Wright: After what happened, you don’t need to make up excuses, and I know each of you well enough to know that you’re not the type to do so. You should be proud of the support you received and the way you handled yourselves throughout the campaign.)
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