There's an old adage "It's not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game." This can, in some respects, be summarized by the idea that a good game is actually a win for all the participants, regardless of the outcome.
I want to take issue with something John said. It was specifically about MAGA world admitting that Trump "lost" the 2020 election. We're all familiar with that part, my comment is that I would contend that at least in modern history, no candidate has actually ever agreed they lost an election. They "conceded." I feel this minor change is a surprisingly important thing. A concession does not mean you lost, it means you gave up trying.
However, it has two important interpretations. Concession can equal loss. The second is conceding denies loss.
Consider it this way:
Equals loss
Consider chess grandmasters. One concedes (lays down their king) in most games. The games are rarely (if ever) played to checkmate. The reason is because once a player has realized their inferior positioning, they know that solid play by their opponent (which is expected) will result in their defeat, so their is no point in continuing. However, that choice makes the assumption that their opponent will not make any mistakes. Now, they shouldn't make a mistake, but it's important to recognize that the conceding player does not force them to play it out and possibly make such a mistake. This same kind of thing happens in professional poker by folding (where chance could actually change the game and you could fold a winning hand).
In both these cases, the rules of game state concession = loss. If you fold your poker hand or lay down your king, you lose, no matter if you would have won if you hadn't folded.
Deny Loss
Because conceding is giving up, it means you didn't actually "lose".
I had a great school shirt that had a picture of a football and the phrase "never defeated". It was true. However, the phrase "never victorious" also was true because the school didn't have a football team.
While conceding means "never victorious" it also means "never defeated".
For example, in a criminal case pleading no-contest as opposed to pleading guilty allows a defendant to maintain that they have never admitted guilt and to say "i always have been innocent". They agree not to challenge, but not that they lost.
"No surrender!" is effectively a concession "because we could still win" or more acccurately "we won the wrong game."
Compare laying down the king in chess to "taking a knee" in football. We require this farce of a play with a very likely expected outcome, instead of just allowing the game to end. Why do we do that? Why don't we let the other team concede (or just rewrite the rules to end the game here)? All sorts of sports have these lame duck ends just to run out the clock. How many teams actually come back in bottom of the 9th, or in the last 5 seconds of a basketball game? However, some do. "Never surrender"
So that does this have to do with Trump losing the election.
I would argue that no election has resulted in a party agreeing they lost. Instead, they conceded and that pre-2000 concession=loss and forced closure. Importantly, the actual outcome (the actual vote count) didn't matter. If everyone in a poker game (but one) folds, you never see who would have actually won because the game is over and no more cards are dealt..
However, in 2000, we have the first change. We have a denial of concession to deny finality. We have Al Gore's concession and retraction. This forced a recount, Supreme Court case, etc. all of which fully made clear that there are faults in the election system. To put it another way, trying to count all the votes can't be done accurately (ever - we know this). Everyone realized that the vote count is always inaccurate and what that meant was really important It means we all got focused on the poker hand we "would have had" if we'd just stayed in.
In politics now, you don't concede to give closure to the election, you concede (and now, not even that) so you can say you didn't lose the election.
"The supreme court decided the election," "But I won the popular vote," "there are discrepancies", "the ballot is confusing" etc. are all akin to arguing that you should have won a poker hand you folded or a chess game you conceded. Politicians have lost the ability to lose.
Hey all, friend of Ben's here.
There's an old adage "It's not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game." This can, in some respects, be summarized by the idea that a good game is actually a win for all the participants, regardless of the outcome.
I want to take issue with something John said. It was specifically about MAGA world admitting that Trump "lost" the 2020 election. We're all familiar with that part, my comment is that I would contend that at least in modern history, no candidate has actually ever agreed they lost an election. They "conceded." I feel this minor change is a surprisingly important thing. A concession does not mean you lost, it means you gave up trying.
However, it has two important interpretations. Concession can equal loss. The second is conceding denies loss.
Consider it this way:
Equals loss
Consider chess grandmasters. One concedes (lays down their king) in most games. The games are rarely (if ever) played to checkmate. The reason is because once a player has realized their inferior positioning, they know that solid play by their opponent (which is expected) will result in their defeat, so their is no point in continuing. However, that choice makes the assumption that their opponent will not make any mistakes. Now, they shouldn't make a mistake, but it's important to recognize that the conceding player does not force them to play it out and possibly make such a mistake. This same kind of thing happens in professional poker by folding (where chance could actually change the game and you could fold a winning hand).
In both these cases, the rules of game state concession = loss. If you fold your poker hand or lay down your king, you lose, no matter if you would have won if you hadn't folded.
Deny Loss
Because conceding is giving up, it means you didn't actually "lose".
I had a great school shirt that had a picture of a football and the phrase "never defeated". It was true. However, the phrase "never victorious" also was true because the school didn't have a football team.
While conceding means "never victorious" it also means "never defeated".
For example, in a criminal case pleading no-contest as opposed to pleading guilty allows a defendant to maintain that they have never admitted guilt and to say "i always have been innocent". They agree not to challenge, but not that they lost.
"No surrender!" is effectively a concession "because we could still win" or more acccurately "we won the wrong game."
Compare laying down the king in chess to "taking a knee" in football. We require this farce of a play with a very likely expected outcome, instead of just allowing the game to end. Why do we do that? Why don't we let the other team concede (or just rewrite the rules to end the game here)? All sorts of sports have these lame duck ends just to run out the clock. How many teams actually come back in bottom of the 9th, or in the last 5 seconds of a basketball game? However, some do. "Never surrender"
So that does this have to do with Trump losing the election.
I would argue that no election has resulted in a party agreeing they lost. Instead, they conceded and that pre-2000 concession=loss and forced closure. Importantly, the actual outcome (the actual vote count) didn't matter. If everyone in a poker game (but one) folds, you never see who would have actually won because the game is over and no more cards are dealt..
However, in 2000, we have the first change. We have a denial of concession to deny finality. We have Al Gore's concession and retraction. This forced a recount, Supreme Court case, etc. all of which fully made clear that there are faults in the election system. To put it another way, trying to count all the votes can't be done accurately (ever - we know this). Everyone realized that the vote count is always inaccurate and what that meant was really important It means we all got focused on the poker hand we "would have had" if we'd just stayed in.
In politics now, you don't concede to give closure to the election, you concede (and now, not even that) so you can say you didn't lose the election.
"The supreme court decided the election," "But I won the popular vote," "there are discrepancies", "the ballot is confusing" etc. are all akin to arguing that you should have won a poker hand you folded or a chess game you conceded. Politicians have lost the ability to lose.