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to expire in shame. The sovereignty of the people shall be rescued from this peril and re-established.”
    In 2000, Vice President Al Gore faced a remarkably similar situation and was criticized as Tilden had been for not making a more forceful claim to the presidency. Having won the popular vote by a margin of 500,000, Gore lost the election to George W. Bush when he failed to win the state of Florida by 537 votes. Gore had said that on election night he felt considerable pressure “to be gracious about this,” which led him to concede perhaps too quickly when his own interests would have been served by waiting a while longer. Gore had called Bush to concede at about 2:30 a.m. EST the morning following Election Day, and that call was widely reported in the media. It was while Gore was en route to give his formal public concession speech that aides intercepted him and urged him to retract his concession because of tightening vote totals in Florida. Gore again called Bush who, incredulous, asked, “Let me make sure that I understand: You’re calling back to retract that concession?” Gore replied, “You don’t have to be snippy about it.”
    A partial recount was halted by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision that the court itself said set no precedent. The month-long dispute had resulted in some minor scuffles—a few Gore partisans protesting in Washington, D.C., even tried to rouse a cheer of “Gore or blood” to evoke the Tilden crisis—but the tradition of a good loser is now deeply rooted in American politics. Tensions rapidly dissipated when Gore gave a remarkably cheerful concession speech and there was no violence, even though surveys later showed that 97 percent of those who voted for Gore believed he was the “rightful” president. But once Gore had conceded, even in a private phone call, the perception was that he had lost and then was trying to overturn the results; had he never conceded, the public perception might have been that both candidates had an equal claim to the election.
    Gore is not the only cautionary tale of a loser willing to concede too soon. President Jimmy Carter conceded to Ronald Reagan on Election Day in 1980 with a telephone call at 9:01 p.m. Eastern time, followed by a speech an hour later at the Sheraton Washington Hotel ballroom. Carter had been urged to delay his concession until 11 p.m. Eastern time, after the polls were closed on the West Coast. But Carter was worried the public, knowing that Reagan was projected to win by a wide margin, would think he was sulking in the White House and he did not want to appear to be a “bad loser.”
    â€œIt’s ridiculous,” Carter said. “Let’s go and get it over with.” That decision infuriated Democrats, who thought Carter’s early concession led some voters in the West to skip casting their ballots. House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill raged that Carter had cost a half-dozen Democrats seats in Congress and perhaps two Senate seats. He yelled at a Carter aide, “You guys came in like a bunch of jerks, and I see you’re going out the same way!”
    Despite what appeared to be a mistake in retrospect, Gore was not unwise in trying to avoid being labeled a sore loser, for complaints about the fairness of a result seldom receive much sympathy beyond the losing candidate’s most rabid followers. Americans simply do not want to consider that an election has been unjust or worse.
    Gore and Carter were not alone in fearing what the label of “sore loser” might do to their reputation. Ohio governor James M. Cox said of his 1920 defeat to Warren Harding, “A wrong reaction then could have ruined my life.” James G. Blaine demonstrated the danger of complaining about a perceived injustice when he attributed his 1884 loss to disenfranchisement of African-American voters in the South. He had fallen to Grover Cleveland by barely