Rex Smith: Losing well can sustain democracy

Evidence suggests Donald Trump in defeat would be more Cam Newton than Al Gore, less inclined to offer a gracious concession than to storm off the set, as the losing quarterback in last year's Super Bowl did — after six sacks, two lost fumbles, one interception and 18 for 41 passing (a performance that still might be considered superior to Trump's since the Republican National Convention).

Or, as Trump suggested this week, will he refuse to accept the legitimacy of the election if he loses, and leave among his most ardent supporters — a sizeable group of citizens — the awful suspicion that American democracy is "rigged," as he says?

[...] if people come to believe that their votes don't count, and that elections are a sham because of some vast conspiracy linking politicians, law enforcement and the media, as Trump has suggested without justification, then it's only a short step toward a sense that a revolution is justified.

[...] a presidential election isn't like a football game, and the famous dictum of Vince Lombardi — "show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser" — isn't at all applicable to a democratic system in which losers and winners still need to work together to assure that the process of governing goes on.

Nor is Trump's threat anything like the legal dispute that held up the election results in 2000, when Florida law triggered a recount that some counties there resisted, eventually leading to a Supreme Court review.

Gore could have continued the fight in the court of public opinion — he had, after all, won a half-million votes more than Bush — but he instead went before television cameras and spoke of what the outcome said about the American system.