Even in defeat McSally plays sycophant for Donald Trump

The Associated Press declared Mark Kelly the winner in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race at 12:51 a.m. last Wednesday, hours after the polls closed. It seemed pretty clear that’s where the election was headed.

Still, Sen. Martha McSally didn’t concede. And at the time, I could not blame her.

But in the days since then McSally’s situation has not improved. As of Wednesday, Kelly led McSally by nearly 80,000 votes. There are not that many votes left to be counted.

She’s done.

She’s been done.

It’s a very difficult position for a person with political ambitions to be in, but the best of them accept it with grace and move on.

McSally did so when she lost to Sen. Krysten Sinema in 2018. She called Sinema and posted a tweet and video saying,

Congrats to @kyrstensinema. I wish her success. I’m grateful to all those who supported me in this journey. I’m inspired by Arizonans’ spirit and our state’s best days are ahead of us. McSally can’t win. She knows it. There is no point in playing along with the destructive Donald Trump line, attempting to snatch victory from the jaws of democracy. A strategy based on trashing the election integrity of the nation is the weakest, most venile form of party over country.

All nine of Arizona’s incumbent members of Congress won reelection.

So far as I know, neither of the major political parties is claiming fraud in any of those elections. It’s pretty much that way up and down the ticket all over the state, all over the country.

Some of the people you voted for won. Some of them lost. That’s how it goes.

McSally’s election didn’t go her way. She now has an opportunity to reassure voters that the system works. The other Arizona Republicans in Congress, who were on the same ballot as her, have retained their seats. How did the system work for them but not McSally and Trump? Suggesting that there is corruption only when people in your party lose isn’t proof of malfeasance, just of sour grapes.

I wouldn’t expect McSally to go so far as to congratulate Joe Biden on his win.

Four other Republican senators have done that. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

McSally wants to stay on Trump’s good side so she wouldn’t dare congratulate Biden, even if that, too, would be the right thing to do.

But McSally can, and should, concede to Kelly.

Not just because of the irrefutable math, but because it’s the right thing to do.

McSally has lived a life of honorable service for which doing the right thing was promised and expected.

Why stop now?