Good morning. It is Saturday, November the 9th. I'm Ali Velshi.

Politics is easier for most of us when the democratic ideals we cherish triumph, or at least persist.

But to be politically engaged, which you likely are if you're watching me right now,

is to not only risk losing an election, but to be prepared and to be willing to lose.

To be politically engaged is to put it all on the line, knowing full well that the outcome,

at least the immediate outcome, might not be the one you worked so hard for.

I know the story well. I learned it when I was 11 years old, working on my father's first campaign in Canada.

I learned on election night in 1981 when my dad and I, in the car on the drive from our home,

where we had gone to freshen up after a grueling election day to the

campaign headquarters. We expected the results to take a while to come in, so we were in the car

when the polls closed. It turned on the radio, and the hosts said what I would learn to say years

later when covering elections, that it's too early to tell who will form the government.

But based on history and demographics and exit polling, things I was too young to understand at the time,

they were able to project the results in one constituency, the one my dad was contesting.

And what they announced, in the first minute of the broadcast, was that he had lost.

It was just the two of us in the car that night. Little 11-year-old

me was devastated. I looked at my dad. I said, I can't believe we lost. He turned his attention

away from the road for just a moment to look at me. With a smile on his face, he said,

of course we lost. We were never going to win. I asked, then why did we do this? Because we could, he told me.

We ran because we could.

And more people voted for the other guy than voted for me.

It's okay. Life goes on.

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