Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday shared what he described as a key principle of democracy: “When you lose, you accept the outcome.”
The Biden administration official was asked by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” about the alarming number of Republican candidates who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
“One of the most important principles in democracy is that when you lose, you accept the outcome,” said the onetime Democratic presidential candidate and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “And I’ve had to do that. Winning is much more fun than losing. I’ve done both.”
“And the reason that’s so important is because we expect the same thing from citizens in terms of policy decisions,” he added. “Part of what it means to live in a democracy is that we have this process for getting decisions that all of us have to live by ― those of us who agreed with the decision and those of us who were against it.”
“And so if we all have to live with the outcome of each of these policy choices, it’s only fair that the people who make them have to live with the outcome of when we choose which one of them is going to be in charge. That’s how the bargain works.”
A Washington Post analysis published earlier this month found that a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot for House, Senate and statewide offices in the November election have denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Of the nearly 300 Republican election deniers on the ballot, most will likely win, the Post reported.