Presidential candidates who went to sleep Election night believing they’d won, only to wake up in the morning to find out the opposite.  Charles Hughes 1916 and Thomas Dewey 1948.  Dewey, when he woke up, cursed “that son of a bitch” Truman and later drank himself into a stupor — at least that’s how I remember the story.  The opponents — Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman …

Truman, doing the opposite of his 1946 act where as the mid-term debacle played out on the radio had the radio turned down, disclaimed interest, and went back to his poker games… in 1948 he found the early returns he was looking for to indicate victory and ditched his residence… leaving his daughter to come out as the Media buzzed about on the coming stunning upset with the “Truman has left the Building” esque message.

Wilson  1916 and Roosevelt 1940 both came as America was not in a World War.  Wilson drew up a contingency plan where he would appoint Hughes Secretary of State and resign alongside his vice president, to forego his lame duck session.  This example was most recently cited in 2008 on what some commentators wished Bush were able to do (lines of succession have changed since then, and nobody is aching for a President Pelosi) — and I am guessing that if you look back you can see it cited in 1932, 1952, 1968, 1980, and 1992… maybe even in 1960 and 1988.

Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 saw some early returns that boded a likely defeat for him, and sequestered himself alone into an empty room to brood over the future of a world imperiled, with a Republican Party in the White House that whatever else was true of Willkie was still beholden to Isolationists.  He emerged buoyed and in good spirits when returns fleshed out that he would win.

The Drama of Election Night 1876 — and Hayes and Tilden were two other candidates who went to sleep believing one thing only to wake up to find out another — echoed through 2000 — remember Gore’s phone call concession retraction to Bush?  John Kerry waited the night in 2004 to concede defeat against the backdrop of provisional ballots –a perfect vehicle for electoral disenfranchisement as election prognoses kick in to shape popular conception.  Supposedly John Edwards held the hard line against conceding, but I suspect that this was an appeal for liberal votes going into the 2008 primary.  While these candidates shut down and disclaimed all grass-roots activism on this subject, Nixon in 1960 conceded carefully, and let his activists carry on in Illinois and Texas and nurse their grudges along with him.

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