Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. – Cervantes, Don Quixote
One of the great lessons of life, one that takes some of us, including yours truly, many years to grasp, is not to force things. Sometimes you must let matters run their course. Sometimes you must take advantage of what nature and circumstance put in front of you.
I had an excellent example of that this past weekend. Some might recall that I live in Colorado and in 2014 I was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate. I received 52,000 votes, the most ever for a third-party candidate in a Colorado US Senate election. Not too bad. I enjoyed the experience so much I was a candidate for the same nomination this year, along with another lady.
The vote wasn’t particularly close, but she did not earn enough votes to claim the nomination outright. I earned enough to force a primary election in June.
I had suspected this might happen. My opponent grew up in Communist China and is a great friend of liberty and I knew as soon as she announced I had an uphill fight. I also determined I wanted to be on the ballot this November, so I decided to withdraw from the US Senate race, if I was nominated to run for the House of Representatives in District 3.
This was not the most difficult nomination to get in the history of politics. Nobody else had announced for it and I was nominated by acclimation. I then withdrew from the US Senate race.
I didn’t have to. As noted, I greatly enjoy running for the United States Senate and I could have accepted the primary. However, I might not have won the primary.
Fortune is guiding our affairs…
OK, the House of Representatives is not as prestigious as the US Senate, but I know from experience the US Senate is a tough nut to crack for a third-party candidate. A House race will be somewhat easier to make a difference in. I have contacts in the district and I have experience I didn’t have two years ago.
We must not fight the natural order. If we put it to work for us, the results might surprise us.
