It's Thursday, November 7, 2024. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

There's something that's a bit odd about the American presidential culture, but odd sometimes is nonetheless important. One of the important factors

in an American presidential election is not what is just said by the winner, but what is said by the

loser in the election. And so formerly, this is known as the concession of the election, or a concession

speech in terms of the words that are offered.

In America's political culture, generally speaking, in the age of the telephone or similar kinds of communications technology, the losing candidate places a call to the winning

candidate. Some effective words are expressed about the acknowledgement that the election was

lost, and there is a

pledge to continue to work in support the common goal of defending the Union and of supporting

a strong future for the United States of America. Now, sometimes those concession speeches have

been made by individuals who went on later to win the White House.

One of the most interesting of those examples would be Richard Nixon losing the 1960 election,

under suspicious circumstances, by the way, to the Democratic nominee, who was then Senator John F. Kennedy.

Just eight years later, and with many setbacks along the way,

Richard Nixon would come back to win the presidential election.

He won the White House, and then he won it convincingly again in 1972,

only to resign from office, the only president to do so in 1974.

The point is this.

Sometimes you have someone who concedes an election and then comes back a winner. More than

not in this kind of situation, when you have a concession speech, it is one of the last major

political acts of an individual. And in all likelihood, that's what this means for Vice President

Kamala Harris. The reason for that is interesting, but it's also fairly easy to understand.

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