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By Tom Rosshirt | Chief Strategist & Director of Research, Dignity.Us
The mid-term elections included some of the most appalling contempt and some of the best dignity campaigning I’ve ever seen – and voters rewarded dignity.
This could be a turning point in American politics.
Years ago, when we were starting our dignity work, Tim Shriver was clear-eyed about the prospects for dignity in politics. “Nobody thinks you can change the country by losing,” he said.
We knew that if candidates were going to campaign with dignity, they had to be able to win with dignity – not in spite of dignity, but because of it.
We saw that happen last week.
For years, friendly skeptics warned us: “Contempt works!” – and they had evidence to back it up. But we believed that dignity could win … if the contempt got so bad it started to backfire.
“We knew that if candidates were going to campaign with dignity, they had to be able to win with dignity … We saw that happen last week.”
When Vivek Ramaswamy aired his now-famous ad, we knew the response would help us assess the progress of dignity in politics.
Ramaswamy’s ad featured Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. But the ad left out these tragic facts: The mother’s husband was arrested for raping her daughter Amy when Amy was 12 years old. The husband fled, the mother took the side of her husband, and she hadn’t seen Amy in 48 years.
The general post-election opinion was: “That ad did him in. He went too far. He never recovered. And he took others down with him.”
Few stories of contempt offer such a clear moral, but this lesson will live forever: It set a new low, the stakes were high, the candidate doubled down, the contempt backfired, and everyone was watching.
Candidates undercutting their own cause with their own contempt is a pre-requisite for the rise of dignity in politics. But it’s not enough. People won’t abandon an old way until they see a new way.
The new way was marked out in this campaign by a talented wave of candidates who showed how to enter a culture of contempt, campaign with dignity, and win.
A skillful dignity campaigner knows that contempt is a powerful and dangerous force, but it has a secret weakness. Contempt is too morally ugly to live in the light. That’s why contempt always wears a disguise. It pretends to be justice, or righteousness, or defending the innocent, or fighting evil.
“The new way was marked out in this campaign by a talented wave of candidates who showed how to enter a culture of contempt, campaign with dignity, and win.”
But Dignity campaigners are wise to the disguise. They know that the best way to challenge contempt is to expose it, and the best way to expose contempt is to surround it with dignity. That gives contempt nowhere to hide and no one to blame – so people see the contempt more clearly, they get turned off, and they turn away.
That’s why skillful dignity campaigners are not waiting for contempt to backfire; they make contempt backfire by the way they campaign. When voters can see the two side by side, contempt is embarrassed by dignity.
Sending dignity candidates to campaign in a culture of contempt calls to mind the passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says to his disciples: “Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
“Skillful dignity campaigners are not waiting for contempt to backfire; they make contempt backfire by the way they campaign.”
Only the wise can be a force for dignity in a culture of contempt. Dignity campaigners know that merely using less contempt can’t overturn a culture that rewards contempt. They have to create a sharp contrast. They have to declare a new culture – one that honors and rewards dignity – and they have to embody that new culture in the way they campaign.
Tom Rosshirt and Haley Talbot at the Communications Debrief, September 2026
Political Analysis
Many people are offering explanations for the campaign results, and many ignore the dignity angle. They focus on policies – on data centers, tariffs, the war in Iran, and the inflation that ensued.
But policy is about dignity too. Dignity in politics is not just how you talk to people. It’s also about listening to them, taking them seriously, treating them like they matter, honoring and supporting their daily struggle to keep a roof over their head, their household running, their kids learning, and their family together.
Recently, I read that this campaign was “historic.” We won’t know how historic it was until we see what happens next. Politicians always study each other and learn from each other. Whenever there’s an election, the smart politicians who lost spend time reflecting: “how did I get beat?” And they learn from their loss.
Maybe, in the future, politicians will study the playbook of the class of dignity candidates of 2026 – and campaigns will become contests of who’s better in treating everyone with dignity, not who’s better in treating the other side with contempt.
Tom Rosshirt greeting Nelson Mandela, 1993
Late on election night, David Axelrod, former chief campaign strategist for President Obama, reflected on the Senate campaigns of James Talarico and Adam Hamilton:
“We’ve come through a season of such cynicism and such anger. And they ran against that …. I think that people are really ready for that. They want a season of decency because hate is very, very debilitating. It's tiring. It's grinding. And so, to see these two guys go counter to that, and succeed, I think is a real auguring of what might come. People are making a statement about the kind of politics that they want, and if people are thinking of running for President of the United States, they ought to pay attention to that, because I think people want an antidote to what we have right now.”
I could say that the pendulum is swinging back – but I don’t think we’re going back to anything we’ve had before. I hope we’re going forward, to a new politics that blurs the old boundaries. And I hope these mid-terms are the turning point. No candidate had a perfect record in treating others with dignity. But we don’t need a perfect record; we just need improvement. And we don’t need a majority of the candidates; we just need a trend.
“People are making a statement about the kind of politics that they want, and if people are thinking of running for President of the United States, they ought to pay attention … because I think people want an antidote to what we have right now.”— David Axelrod
In his victory speech Tuesday night, Byron Donalds, the newly elected Republican Governor of Florida, tamped down on some jeers from his supporters as he made a gracious mention of his opponent. “We win with class and dignity,” the new Governor told his crowd.
That, I pray, is the mark of the new American politics.
— Tom Rosshirt
Dignity Voter
Join Us for Our Final Dignity Voter Meeting
Tuesday, November 10 · 7:30 PM ET · Zoom
The election is over, and we want to hear from you. Join us Tuesday for our final Dignity Voter meeting as we look back on the campaign together: what we saw, what surprised us, and what we learned about dignity in politics. Then we’ll talk about where we go from here.
Thank you for being part of this campaign. We hope you’ll join us for this last conversation!
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Watch & Read
In Case You Missed It This Week
Utah
Two Days of Dignity in Utah
Tim and Tami spent two busy days in Utah last week, engaging with education, government, business, and community leaders on the power of dignity to strengthen relationships, leadership, and communities. Highlights included a keynote by Tim to Utah school superintendents and administrators, conversations with local government leaders, and a class with University of Utah students. On Election Day, our colleague Samantha Ball presented data from the Dignity Barometer to community and civic leaders, followed by a panel discussion with Tim, Tami, and former Utah Governor Gary Herbert. The visit concluded with Tim speaking at the launch of the Investable Humanity Leadership Lab in partnership with The Other Side Village and the Utah Advocacy Coalition. Throughout the visit, Tim and Tami emphasized the growing momentum of the dignity movement and the opportunities to put dignity into practice across every sector of society.
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Help grow a culture of dignity.
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