Workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, voted by a margin of more than 2 to 1 not to join a union. It’s a heavy blow for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, for the wider labor movement, and for the many politicians and activists who wanted the union’s push to succeed. But the workers have spoken — and all of the groups on the other side should be listening to the message. Instead, many rejected the result and attacked the process, almost as though an election is to be respected only if you win. When Republicans did that after the presidential election, they were rightly condemned. The idea that the overwhelming majority of workers in Bessemer were intimidated or bamboozled into voting against their interests — as unionization proponents have suggested — is not only implausible; it’s insulting, as though workers couldn’t possibly be so foolish to have voted against it, so they must have been coerced or tricked. Nonsense.

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