For the Record: How to concede defeat at Thanksgiving

Brett McGinness, and Joanna Allhands

USA TODAY

If everything goes south, remember that cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes are your best food fight weapons. Dinner rolls are for suckers.

Last Thanksgiving, For the Record helpfully offered advice on how to start political fights with your relatives. This year, we're taking a different approach, what with all the carving knives and all. Half of you will watch your candidate lose next week, then have to deal with at least one loudmouth jerk at Thanksgiving who supported the winner. If you want to go all scorched-earth on your relatives, be our guest! On the other hand, if you just want to get through the holiday without having your earlobes bitten off in a drunken brawl, here's our advice.

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How to lose

Let it go! Conceal, don't feel. The past is in the past. Don't touch me, I don't want to hurt you. "Frozen" is full of good post-election advice.

No matter how hard you argue or how witty your sour-grapes insults are, the results of your Thanksgiving dinner argument aren't going to overturn the election. You're not even going to change anyone's mind, really. Save your pompous defeatism for February 2017, when you can affix your "Don't blame me, I voted for Candidate Z" bumper sticker to your used Subaru.

If you have to, make a big speech. Were you the jackass turning every Facebook post into a political discussion for the past year? ("Happy birthday! It's probably your last birthday ever, since Candidate X is going to spark a global thermonuclear war.") You might need to say something quick to a sizable number of your political rivals -- something along the lines of, "You know I've never been a fan of Candidate X, and I'm still not. But I know several of my friends and loved ones have faith that X will do a great job, and I hope that's going to be the case. At the end of the day, we're still family and we're still Americans, and I think we all just want to see this country succeed." Then respond to every subsequent political jab with, "Hey, I've said my piece. I'm done talking politics tonight."
On the other hand, if you want to avoid the big speech altogether ...
Defuse the biggest bully first. It's kind of like surviving prison: Shortly after you arrive, find the loudest partisan for the winning candidate, and ... concede. Just do it as quickly as possible without blaming the outcome on rigging, voter intimidation, media manipulation or whatever else made your awesome candidate lose, so as not to prolong the conversation. Then ask for their help in keeping political discussions off-limits for the day. With any luck, they'll make it their personal mission to keep the peace.
Invoke the spirit of a sainted relative. Living or dead, it barely matters. "Look, I know that Great Aunt Ruth wouldn't have wanted to see our family fight like this. Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday, probably!" (Also: "Look, it's probably Great Aunt Ruth's last Thanksgiving this year. Let's not ruin things! We can save it for an unproductive text message argument next week.") Try using the memory of a dead pet if you don't have other options available.

And when all else fails, chug a beer, scream "‘Murica!" and go buy a store-made pumpkin pie to eat in the park.

How to win

Be a total jackass all night long! After all, you totally earned it. If you haven't been disinvited from Christmas and written out of several wills by the time the evening's through, you clearly didn't take full advantage.

The #s and the $$$

Job fairs have been busy as employers struggled to hire workers in a tight labor market.

Hillary Clinton has the lead, but Donald Trump has the momentum ... it's still anyone's game, so don't get all smug just yet that you're going to be the trash-talker on Thanksgiving. Wednesday's polls had positives for both candidates. Trump had solid leads in two of his must-win states, Ohio and Nevada, and jumped out to a 6-point lead in the LA Times/USC tracking poll. Still, Clinton maintained leads in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and Trump will need to pick off a few of those states to take the Oval Office.

On the economic side, the Fed (as expected) kept the federal funds rate low, which is a win for Clinton; any late hit to Obama's economy would be bad news for Hillary. One last piece to the economic outlook puzzle is Friday's jobs report. Clinton is banking on solid holiday hiring to shore up support for business as usual, while bad hiring news would be good for Trump's message that change is needed. What do those numbers look like? Anything north of 200,000 jobs added will be good for Clinton and Democrats, anything below 150,000 works for Donald and the GOP, and any number in between will be spun really, really hard by both sides.

Seriously, go vote

There's pretty compelling evidence that voter satisfaction decreases voter turnout -- in other words, if you're happy with government, you're less likely to head to the polls. So if you're staying home on Election Day because you hate both choices and you want to "send a message," the message you're actually sending is "everything's fine by me." GO VOTE.

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For the Record: How to concede defeat at Thanksgiving

How to lose

How to win

The #s and the $$$

More from the campaign trail

Seriously, go vote