JAMES TARANTO: Trump vs. Gore: The question nobody asked the 2000 loser.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose that during one of the October 2000 presidential debates, Vice President Al Gore had been asked the following question: “Do you make the . . . commitment that you’ll absolutely accept the result of the election?” Moderator Chris Wallace put that query to Donald Trump last night.

Now for the experimental part: Imagine Gore giving a completely truthful answer—that is, an answer that not only reflected his honest intent but accurately anticipated how he would respond to various scenarios, including the one that actually obtained.

It seems to us that Gore’s hypothetical answer would be similar to Trump’s actual one—not the long back-and-forth in which Trump enumerated complaints including media bias, FBI corruption and poorly maintained voter roles, but the prospective bottom line, to wit: “I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time. . . . What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”

Gore probably wouldn’t have said “I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”—that’s a distinctly Trumpian bit of showmanship—but if he were being completely truthful, he would say, as Trump did, that he would keep his options open and respond to circumstances as they arose. And did they ever arise. True, Gore delivered a gracious concession speech, but not until Dec. 13, more than a month after Election Day.

It isn’t hard to imagine a counterfactual scenario in which Gore would have conceded on the normal schedule. If George W. Bush’s initial margin in Florida had been, say, 60,000 votes (just over 1% of the total) instead of around 2,000, there would have been nothing to contest. But the narrow margin in a decisive state led to weeks of lawsuits and selective recounts—and, even after Gore’s concession, to years of bitter claims that he wuz robbed.

Among those bitterly clinging to the myth of the stolen election—or at least propagating it for political purposes—was Hillary Clinton.

As I say, Trump’s real sin is campaigning like a Democrat while running as a Republican.