Hard lesson for the GOP

It must reform itself deeply and nominate worthy candidates

Aprinciple hardwired into the American psyche is that, after a contest, we expect the loser to accept the loss and congratulate the winner.

How many times have we seen high school football players go down to defeat but nonetheless go down the line, shaking the hands of the winners? Or the loser of a close, bitterly fought tennis match pay tribute at center court to the winner?

If there weren’t other reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump for president, the fact that Mr. Trump doesn’t grasp this essential element of American fairness and instead says he will accept the results of the Nov. 8 elections only if he wins, while also saying he will seek to jail Ms. Clinton if elected, is for any American an overwhelming reason to vote for her and against him.

He is a big, spoiled baby, unsuitable to be president of the United States.

The Republican Party is as much to blame for him as are his own ambitions. What used to be the Grand Old Party needs to take a terrible licking at the polls Nov. 8 to absorb the lesson that it must reform itself deeply enough so that it will never again put before the American electorate a candidate for president who is as deeply unqualified for the job as Mr. Trump.

The American people have a right to see on Election Day a ballot that includes at least two persons whom one can consider to be capable of governing us. I don’t think the Democrats did a great job this time, either; the Clinton machine rolled over the Democrats like a rogue power mower in that party’s run-up to the elections. But, compared to Mr. Trump, there is no gainsaying that Ms. Clinton is very well qualified to be president. She has always presented “character” issues to my mind, but there is no getting around her experience and performance as senator from New York for eight years and secretary of state for four years as preparation to become president.

But the Republicans, through a combination of incompetent party management and a lack of the ruthlessness required to eliminate seriously flawed personalities from their lineup of candidates, let us all down. I have probably voted for the Republican candidate for president more often than I have for the Democrat. My father was the last Republican to hold office in the small town I called home. My mother was a faithful Republican pollwatcher at the wooden station up around the corner from us all during and past my childhood. The Republican Party gave us not only Abraham Lincoln, but also decent recent candidates, even through Mitt Romney.

So now, not only does Mr. Trump threaten not to recognize the results unless he wins, he also — by suggesting that the elections will be rigged — encourages his supporters to harass voters at polling places. My mother, all 4-foot-9 of her, would have made short work of either Democratic or Republican bullies who ventured into her 43rd Street polling station.

I am too superstitious to posit a large Democratic victory on Election Day. At the same time, I would argue that, if Ms. Clinton wins, she deserves at least a Democratic Senate to enable her to do some of the good things she promises. For that reason, and on what I consider to be her considerable merits, I will also be voting for Katie McGinty for senator from Pennsylvania. The last straw for me was learning that incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey had been on the board and part owner of forprofit Yorktown University. Those “for profit” schools are the epitome of how rich people shake down poor people — worse, poor young people — who are trying to dig their way out of deadend jobs or “no prospects.”

I have every reason to believe that the Republican Party can dig its way out of a major defeat and remain as a credible American political party at the end of the day. But I don’t think that Ms. Clinton, if she does end up as president, should have to face another round of Mitch McConnell, as Senate majority leader, who will be determined to block every single thing she tries to do as he did with President Barack Obama. Given Mr. McConnell’s orientation, it would be fair to imagine he would be as opposed to her as a woman as he was to Mr. Obama as an African-American. Maybe Republican senators will strip him of a leadership role if they lose their majority in the Senate.

The other major snarl in Washington that might be disentangled by a Democratic victory in the Senate has to do with the Supreme Court. Republicans in the Senate have refused since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February to vote on Mr. Obama’s nominee to succeed him. In doing so, they have put the country at risk, not only of the results of a deadlocked Supreme Court, but also, as the elections approach, of having another 2000 Bush v. Gore blockage with the court in no position to resolve it. One has to ask, is there some ghastly link between Mr. Trump’s idiot position of accepting the results only if he wins and the likely inability of the two ideological camps in the Supreme Court to resolve such a conflict? Mr. Trump’s recourse to bankruptcy litigation across his business career might suggest that we could face such a contingency.

Is it too far out to imagine that Mr. McConnell and the other Republican senators saw this as a possibility and on that basis, for one, refused to face their constitutional responsibility to vote “yes” or “no” on the president’s nominee?

Anyway, we can hope that on election night someone will have won clearly, and that the dark night of the soul that this electoral campaign has produced in us will end. Whoever loses must recall that he or she is an American, concede, and get out of the way to let the winner do his or her best to meet our common problems.