The loser of the 2024 election has to pull it together for the good of the country and stop the sniping and endless refusal to accept the results.

There’s been a lot of talk about democracy at stake in this election but continuing to fight and resist after the people have spoken is undemocratic.

Both sides need to accept the will of the electorate and the Constitution, which includes the Electoral College. The popular vote winner is not the real president, a fact which Democrats especially have trouble accepting.

You can’t dismiss the Electoral College. That’s our system and it’s a good system. Those are the rules and they are there for a reason.

Here’s what you do when you lose. It’s something you learn when you’re in Little League or youth soccer. Graciously admit defeat, congratulate the winner, then go away.

In presidential politics the same thing applies. If you fall short of 270 votes, step aside for the winner. Plan to win the next election. Regroup and come back with better candidates, strategy and message.

Unfortunately both sides have already shown they are incapable of gracefully losing, and already are preparing for a bruising post-election fight over who actually won.

A belligerent Trump wouldn’t accept the will of the people in 2020, leading to the Jan. 6 rioting, and Democrats refused to accept Trump as their president in 2016.

It’s a dangerous and reckless path. Both sides are sore losers.

Unfortunately accepting defeat has been a difficult concept for both parties to grasp for the last few elections.

Remember the petty “Not my President” slogan Democrats adopted for the next four years after the 2016 election? And what about the chilly reception and glares Trump drew from Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama on inauguration day?

Democrats even went so far as to belittle the size of Trump’s inaugural crowds, as if that somehow diminished the new president.

Four years later, it was Trump who wouldn’t leave until pushed out, and continues to talk about the election being stolen to this day.

Voters are sick and tired of it.

If Trump had simply run a positive campaign this year without the hostility to accepting Joe Biden won, who knows how it would have affected the results?

Same goes for Democrats. If they had spent less time and money fighting Trump in the courts and more time outlining their positive vision for the country, Kamala Harris may have gone into Election Day as the prohibitive favorite.

Whoever loses this time, they should take time to reflect and think about where they went wrong, and fix it for the next election.

The losing party will be better off for it, and so will the nation.

And God forbid if there’s an Electoral College tie this year, as some have speculated.

A 269-269 tie, which has never happened before, would throw the election to the newly-elected U.S. House. Each state’s delegation would get a single vote and the candidate who gets 26 votes becomes the 47th president.

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Under the 12th Amendment, the newly elected Senate would decide who becomes vice president.

That means it’s technically possible to have a Republican president and Democratic vice president, or vice versa.

If that happens – and it’s very unlikely – both parties’ heads would explode and the country might be plunged into turmoil.