Now that polls have closed, polemics — intense and often mean-spirited arguing — has begun. Heaven help us, it might continue until Jan. 6, when a newly elected Senate votes to accept or reject states’ electoral votes. Even locally we face challenges. With write-in votes not tallied until later, key local races weren’t decided as usual on election night.

In 2000, dimpled and hanging chad entertained us until a bunch of guys and a distinguished gal in what looked like choir robes stepped in a little over a month later.

In 2020, the drama played out more as a melodramatic fantasy, ending with a near-riot nearly two months after the last votes were cast.

Sad as these events might have been, at least they were entertaining in the perverse way that the O.J. Simpson murder trial was in 1995 or that the countdown to shock and awe was in 2003. In many regards, politics has turned into a binge-watched Netflix series, with each new season drawing to a close with an even more serious cliffhanger like that in the current “The Diplomat.”

In war, politics, or drama, what seem to be our least proud moments often are the ones that most define the strength of our democracy and its ability to weather any challenge.

While it’s possible current campaigns will be decided in the nighttime hours between the writing of this editorial and your reading of it, experts tell us it probably will be until Saturday before we know with any degree of certainty who actually will be certified as having won the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

It’s not as if our great democracy, the world’s longest, has not had to survive electoral crises in the past.

It took more than three dozen votes in the House before Thomas Jefferson was able to beat back a challenge from running mate Aaron Burr in 1800. John Quincy Adams, son of Jefferson’s 1800 opponent, bested populist Andrew Jackson with a “corrupt bargain” in 1824. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won with just 40% of the vote. Rutherford Hayes used secret deals in 1876 to beat popular vote winner Samuel Tilden, setting back racial equality in the process. There even were claims that John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 only because of payoffs to Mafia bosses in Illinois.

Whatever results eventually seem to take hold this year, let’s all make a vow not to cry over spilled elections and instead focus on the next election and on ensuring that we have better candidates to choose among two to four years from now.

Whichever candidate moves into the White House on Jan. 20, let’s ask that he or she put a pin in the thousands of things that were vowed to be done on Day One — even though, in most cases, presidents don’t have the power to do such things anyway — and begin identifying and dealing not just with the same old issues but with new ones yet to emerge.

Now is the time for all good men — and women — to come to the aid of our parties by helping identify issues and ultimately candidates who can replace the same old folks arguing incessantly about the same old issues instead of moving us ahead.

This isn’t a challenge for “someone” to undertake. It’s a challenge for each of us. And it’s a challenge we willingly should undertake — not, as John Kennedy said, because it is easy but because it is hard.

As we prepare to honor those who have served our county on Veterans Day next week, let’s consider how each of us personally can serve and become one of the thoroughly engaged citizens democracy depends on to function.

— Eric Meyer