No matter how convincingly you attribute the loss to bad timing or bad luck or lack of money — it’s impossible not to feel at some level as if you have been personally repudiated by the entire community, that you don’t quite have what it takes, and that everywhere you go, the word ‘loser’ is flashing through people’s minds. They’re the sorts of feelings that most people haven’t experienced since high school, when the girl you’d been pining over dismissed you with a joke in front of her friends, or you missed a pair of free throws with the big game on the line — the kinds of feelings that most adults wisely organize their lives to avoid.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Mar 22, 2013