From “Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies” by David P. Gushee
Compare, for example, the postelection behavior of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore after the razor-thin election of 2000 with that of Donald Trump after the not-especially-close election of 2020. In 2000, the election came down to one state – Florida – in which the two candidates were within six hundred votes of each other. There were all kinds of problems with the count. The matter made its way to the Supreme Court, which then had a 5-4 conservative majority and ordered a stop to the vote counting in Florida by that same 5-4 majority. On constitutional grounds, the decision was dubious at best.
Under the circumstances, Al Gore had very good reasons to continue to contest the election. Instead, in his role as US vice president, Gore was the very person responsible for presiding over the official electoral vote tabulation that certified his own defeat in early January 2001. He did so, with good humor and without protest. He then showed up for George W. Bush’s inauguration two weeks later. That is an example of honoring democratic norms, even when it is personally very hard. Can anyone reading this book imagine Donald Trump acting as Al Gore did in January 2001?