Pundits pronounce lessons from election results with certainty, but these lessons are systematically wrong and will be proven so in retrospect.

In 2008, Barack Obama's election was interpreted by pundits as the beginning of a post-racial America, but this interpretation was discredited within a day.

After Trump's election in 2016, Democrats' interpreted lesson was they needed a candidate with inside experience from a younger generation, but Trump subsequently won re-election, suggesting this lesson was also incorrect.

Anti-immigrant messaging ('When Mexico sends its people, they're bringing drugs...they're rapists') was the winning electoral message that led to Trump's election, contradicting the pundit consensus that such rhetoric would alienate Hispanic voters.

Predictions that Donald Trump would be a permanent pariah and never be allowed in the Capitol again were proven wrong by subsequent events.

The appropriate response to election uncertainty and pundit misprediction is not to seek certainty about electoral meaning, but rather to commit to sustained daily work to move the world toward preferred outcomes.

We do not really know what the election and its outcomes mean, despite widespread pundit certainty about their significance.

Pundits and political actors treat election outcomes as definitive and final, claiming to understand them as harbingers of civilization's trajectory, when in reality their significance is contingent and uncertain.

A better society is possible for our children and this country, which implies that current conditions are improvable through sustained effort.

After Obama's 2012 re-election, the GOP's interpreted lesson was that they needed to signal respect to Hispanic voters, but they subsequently pursued immigration rhetoric that alienated Hispanics, suggesting the lesson they drew was factually incorrect.