article: The billionaire who has cast himself as the law and order candidate seemed ready to commit the democratic felony of refusing to accept defeat at the polls. The property tycoon, who has regularly used legal action, and the threat of it, to build his business empire, appeared to cling to the hope that he could litigate his way to the White House - if, as seems increasingly likely, voters hand the keys to Hillary Clinton. In a stab at damage limitation, he has since modified his position. Trump now says he will accept a "clear result," but reserves the right to mount a legal challenge in the event of a "questionable result". But his original remarks, watched by millions of shell-shocked voters, are hard to walk back. He cannot evoke that old locker room maxim - what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Unsubstantiated claims that this election is rigged has now become the core message of his stump speech, and it seems targeted at 9 November rather than 8 November - a pre-emptive attempt to rationalise defeat the morning after rather than to mobilise supporters on polling day. Not only does this approach seem irresponsible but also counter-productive, for it runs the risk of depressing Republican turnout. Why vote, his more conspiratorial-minded supporters might think, if the fix is already in? Threats of legal challenges may well be Trumpian bluster. His promise to sue the New York Times for publishing accusations from women that he allegedly molested them have so far come to nought. As for saying during the debate he would hold the electorate in "suspense", it sounded like a fading reality TV star clamorous for viewers, fearful his show was about to be cancelled because of sliding ratings. Grace in defeat is not just a feature of the American system, but one of its more elegant pillars. John McCain's concession speech in 2008 is widely regarded as the noblest of his career. John Kerry accepted the outcome in 2004, despite claims of voter irregularities in the decisive battleground state of Ohio. In 1960, when only 113,000 votes out of the 68 million cast separated the candidates, Richard Nixon conceded, even though he would have been forgiven for mounting a more forceful legal challenge, given the allegations of voter fraud in Texas and Illinois. There, Chicago's mayor Richard Daley was alleged to have conjured up enough phantom votes to make sure Illinois remained in John F Kennedy's column. GOP officials carried out investigations and mounted legal challenges in a number of battleground states, but Nixon was publicly acquiescent. The then vice-president told friends he did not want to come across as a sore loser, nor spark a constitutional crisis. In the aftermath of the Las Vegas debate, Trump surrogates cited the more recent example of the contested 2000 election, when Al Gore dramatically withdrew his concession on election night while in his limousine on the way to deliver a speech accepting defeat. But Gore wasn't challenging the results of the election. Rather, he was calling for a recount of the
summary: Sounding more like the potentate of some palm-dotted tropical island than a presidential candidate, Donald Trump twice declined to say during the final televised debate whether he would accept the results of the 2016 election.