The Vote Was a YES: Why I Dare to Hope
The result of last week’s U.S. midterm election could be evidence that we are finally shifting our focus from what we don’t want to what we do. Accountability helps us build what we chose.
Energy Flows Where Attention Goes
It has always baffled me that in politics most of our attention goes to what we don’t want. We have spent years voting against policies that offend our values and threaten our sense of personal autonomy. We blame those who disagree with us and fix our gaze on what’s broken. We are so practiced we could recite our grievances in our sleep. But what would it mean if, as a nation, our attention began to move? Not our opinions, which shift constantly, but our attention: away from what we despise and toward what we wish to build?
Last week, millions of Americans voted for the kind of leaders we want, and the kind of world those leaders might help us build. Frightened and weary, as many of us were, we turned our attention towards what we value. That turn is why I dare to hope. I see it as evidence we are finally making what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning. That is, guiding our attention towards the world in which we wish to live, a vision of our future laid on the foundation of a new paradigm.
The Skeptics Case
Skeptics may say I’m reading a hopeful story into a familiar swing of the pendulum. Midterm turnout is often driven by anger at the party in power. Much of the national coverage frames it that way, with Axios calling it the most sweeping repudiation of a sitting president in modern American history. Opposition was real, and for many voters it was surely a main motive. As The NY Times cautioned, it remains to be seen whether the results signal a broader ideological shift.
Both can be true. Fear and anger may have gotten us to the door, but what we did once inside the voting booth shows what we were reaching for. The clearest evidence is in who and what we chose. NPR: Incoming senators and historic firsts.
Who We Chose
Consider South Carolina, where voters chose a pediatrician, Annie Andrews, over the candidate the president himself had backed for Senator, Darline Graham. Dr. Andrews will be the first woman ever elected to represent her state in that chamber. In Ohio, a former state health official named Amy Acton, who had never run for public office, defeated Vivek Ramaswamy and will be the state’s first woman governor and its first Democrat elected governor in two decades. NPR: Ohio elects Amy Acton. As a doctor, I can’t help noticing that both have built their lives not around winning arguments, but rather serving others.
In New Hampshire, Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the Senate in a race that centered not on his identity, but on policy differences with his opponent, John E. Sununu. In New Mexico, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, became the first Native American woman ever elected governor in this country, and plans to continue the work of current Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, to improve the daily lives of families and children. Newshour_Deb Haaland.
It was neither a single-party, nor single region’s harvest. Byron Donalds, a Republican, and David Crowley, a Democrat, each became the first Black governor of his state, in Florida and Wisconsin respectively. Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia became the first Black woman elected governor in the nation’s history. States Newsroom: Winners who made history Texas, so long assumed to be unmovable, chose its first Latina governor in Gina Hinojosa. And in Virginia, voters removed the ban for same-sex marriage previously written into their state constitution. WJLA: Virginia’s Amendment 2.
Who among the countless other examples inspires you, engages you in the possibility of a positive future?
Given the chance to choose, a great many Americans picked those who widen our sense of who we are and who gets to lead: caregivers, spiritual leaders, newcomers, and those whose diverse experiences are more recognizable to Americans today. Numerous Firsts Pure anger rarely sows a field like that.
From Breakdown to Building
I believe the dismantling of old systems that no longer serve us is well underway. That work was necessary, and much of it is done or inevitable. What remains is harder and more creative: building our vision. Peace, equality, justice, access, collaboration, and mutual respect won’t arrive just because the old structures are failing. It has to be practiced and lived into, and that begins closer to home than any ballot box: with our inner dialogue, with where we place our attention each day, and with the quality of the relationships nearest to us. If we want a culture of respect and collaboration, it has to show up at our kitchen tables and in our group chats before we can demand it from Washington.
The Overlooked Skill
If the dismantling is largely behind us, what will we build with? The skill I think we most lack is accountability. We live in a society that seems almost allergic to it. Most of us were never taught how to name our mistakes, to sit with the harm we’ve caused, and to make amends without collapsing into shame or hiding behind defensiveness. So how can we expect our leaders in politics, health care, education, and security to be accountable when we lack the courage, the capacity, and the practice ourselves? Accountability in institutions reflects accountability in the people who build and sustain them. The question is how we create the conditions: the safety, the language, the models, and the communal support that make it possible to say “I was wrong, and here is what I will do about it,” and survive, even thrive, afterward.
What Accountability Is and Isn’t
Accountability is not punishment, and it isn’t public shaming, though we often mistake it for both. It isn’t the apology wrapped in insincerity, or defense, and it isn’t the performance of guilt that asks the person harmed to comfort the one who did the harm. Real accountability is quieter and much harder. It means naming what happened without flinching, understanding the impact it had on others, repairing what can be repaired, and changing what we do next.
ACKNOWLEDMENT, REPAIR, CHANGED BEHAVIOR.
Without all three we have only words.
Why It’s So Rare
We’ve built a culture where the cost of admitting a mistake feels like annihilation, at least to the ego, and we are wired to defend ourselves against that threat. Psychologists distinguish between guilt, the sense that I did something wrong, and shame, the sense that I am something wrong. Guilt can motivate repair. Shame makes us hide, deflect, and attack, because to be exposed feels unsurvivable. Brené Brown: Shame vs. Guilt When every error becomes a verdict on someone’s worth, whether in a family, a workplace, or a news cycle, the rational response is to deny everything. We have inadvertently trained one another to lie.
Our Leaders Are Our Mirror
We demand that our leaders own their failures, and we should. But we ask for a skill we rarely practice in a climate that punishes anyone who tries. A doctor who fears a lawsuit and ostracism will not easily say “I made an error.” A senator who knows that one admission becomes a weapon for the next campaign will learn to say nothing at all. If we want leaders who can say “I was wrong, and here is what I’ll do about it,” we have to become a public that can hear that sentence without pouncing on it, and that can still hold people to their word afterward. That is a balance, not a loophole: safety to admit, and a firm expectation of repair. It doesn’t start with Washington, but rather in our inner dialogue and the relationships nearest to us. It doesn’t start with Washington, but rather in our inner dialogue and the relationships nearest to us.
Where To Begin: The Four Practices
- Practice at small scale. Notice the next time you’re wrong about something minor and say so plainly, without excuses. The muscle builds from small repetitions.
- Separate the act from the person. When someone owns a mistake, respond to the repair rather than the confession. Thank them, ask what they’ll do differently, and let the relationship stay intact.
- Make repair a norm, not a rescue. In families, teams, and communities, agree in advance that mistakes will be named and fixed, so that nobody has to be brave alone.
- Reward accountability when you see it. The person who says “I got that wrong” is doing something rare. Notice it out loud.
Making the Turn Last
None of this is soft. Accountability without compassion curdles into cruelty, and compassion without accountability leads to denial. The world I’m hoping for needs both. If the election showed us anything, it’s that we’re capable of turning toward what we want. To make that turn last we will need to answer for ourselves, and to make room for others to do the same.
Accountability grows where it's safe to be honest and where repair is expected, and these conditions are made one conversation at a time. That's the work I'd like us to take up together. The vote was a YES. Now we get to practice what we said yes to.
What has been your lived experience? I'd love to hear from you.
- What would make it safer for you to admit a mistake at work, at home, or in your community? What would you need to hear in response?
- Which public figure, from any party, any era, has modeled accountability well? What did they do that stood out?