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fifty thousand votes. The New York Times accused Blaine of sour grapes because he was “smarting from defeat.”
    Richard Nixon weighed both the danger to the nation and to his own political future in deciding against challenging the results of his narrow loss to John Kennedy in 1960—even when there were credible allegations of Democrats stealing votes in Illinois and Texas (though Democrats also alleged Republican vote stealing in Ohio). Nixon discovered that few states even had a mechanism to challenge election results, and worried about the damage to the nation that a months-long process might cause, especially its “devastating” impact on national foreign policy. On a personal level, he also knew that “charges of ‘sore loser’ would follow me through history and remove any possibility of a further political career.”
    Two years later, Nixon forgot his own advice when he lost the governorship of California and famously announced he was through with politics, telling newsmen, “Just think how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” It was the testiest concession since the frontiersman Davy Crockett, defeated in his 1834 bid for re-election to Congress, told his Tennessee constituents they could “go to hell; I’m going to Texas.” Crockett did, only to die at the Alamo in 1836, but Nixon came back to win the presidency in 1968.
    The man Nixon beat that year, Hubert Humphrey, lost a race nearly as close as the 1960 Nixon loss to Kennedy, and he also considered the personal stake in making a graceful concession. “I told myself,” Humphrey said, “‘This has to be done right because it is the opening speech of your next campaign!’ I was already looking ahead.”
    There was historical precedent for Humphrey’s hope that losing graciously would place him in good stead for a future election. After the 1824 election of John Quincy Adams, which had been decided in the U.S. House of Representatives, Andrew Jackson was privately seething at the supposed “corrupt bargain” whereby Adams named Henry Clay secretary of state in return for Clay’s support in the House. Yet, when Jackson bumped into Adams at a social event on the very day the U.S. House decided for Adams, Jackson was expansive and gracious while Adams, the nation’s most experienced diplomat, seemed rigid and ill at ease. Jackson’s grace during the encounter was the talk of the capital, with one friend writing him: “You have, by your dignity and forbearance under all these outrages, won the people to your love.” His demeanor in defeat enhanced his reputation and helped Jackson claim the presidency when he ran again in 1828.
    Disappointed supporters of losing candidates, too, seem to immediately begin looking ahead to the next election and hoped-for retribution —with ballots, not bullets. The authors of the aforementioned Losers’ Consent found that voters who supported the losing candidate in an election certainly do have a higher distrust of our electoral system than those who supported the winner. But that level of distrust is lessened if the person is an active partisan member of one of our two major parties. Given that the two major parties in America routinely win some and lose some, those who strongly identify with one of the major parties know that while their candidate may have lost this time, their time will come again. Our oft-maligned two-party system may limit voter choices, in the opinion of some, but having two, large, relatively evenly matched parties is a key reason America does not suffer from election-related violence. It is not surprising, then, that the highest level of mistrust in our political system is felt by those who consider themselves independent or who are prone to supporting third parties. Based on the past history of third parties, these folks will likely never be on