President Donald Trump has plenty of reasons to be particularly gracious in defeat.

I type those words without being, so far as I know, afflicted by a tumor that is squishing whatever part of my brain controls reasoning and logic.

Nor am I under the influence of any drug stronger than caffeine.

(And even that stimulant’s effects are tempered by a generous dollop of eggnog.)

I understand that “gracious” is not among the adjectives often attributed to the president.

Certainly the word poses no threat to, say, “obnoxious” or “arrogant” when it comes to the Trump Top 10.

But even as the president and his acolytes contest the election results that gave the victory to Joe Biden, Trump ought not feel that he is the architect of an epic political failure.

Indeed it’s remarkable that Biden’s margins in several key states were so slight that Trump’s challenges have a veneer — albeit an exceedingly thin one, best measured in microns — of plausibility.

Based on generally accepted political standards, Trump should have lost in a way that could be described as “McGovernian.”

(Or “Mondalian” if you prefer an invented adjective with an extraterrestrial flavor.)

Trump, unlike those two hapless Democratic candidates, was of course already ensconced in the White House.

Except the traditional advantages afforded by incumbency hardly seemed a factor in 2020.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Consider that Trump over the past 9 months has presided over the worst economic calamity to befall this country in more than 80 years.

He has been in office during the most dangerous pandemic to afflict the nation in a century, and he has been widely criticized — sometimes speciously, sometimes with justification — for botching the chance to use his unique position to calm and to lead a troubled nation during dark days.

Finally, the last year of Trump’s term has been marked by a level of social and racial strife America hasn’t seen since the 1960s.

Even one of those factors might have damaged Trump’s presidency and all but ensured a Biden landslide of the sort that Ronald Reagan inflicted on Walter Mondale in 1984, or comparable to Richard Nixon’s dominance of George McGovern a dozen years earlier.

But with all three crises happening simultaneously, the most surprising part of the election was not that Biden (almost certainly) won, but rather that Trump, carrying more political baggage than a 747, very nearly did.

Given that, the president, who seems to delight in defying expectations, could terribly confuse his legions of detractors by saying something along the lines of “Joe Biden has won the Electoral College based on what we know today, but I believe that to ensure Americans have complete confidence in the integrity of our electoral process, I must pursue the legal remedies available to determine, to the extent possible, whether alleged improprieties affected the outcome.”

Of course the president has not said anything of the sort.

And I no more expect him to make such a speech than I expect him to give up golf.

Or Twitter.

Trump has instead insisted, with the simplistic and smug certainty that is perhaps his most tiresome trademark, that the election was “stolen.”

The president’s critics, in response to that claim, have adopted as their mantra the word “unsubstantiated.”

But even the most zealous Trump opponent must concede that the 2020 election, due to the pandemic, was unique. Never have so many Americans cast mail ballots.

This doesn’t mean widespread voter fraud happened. It certainly doesn’t mean that it was inevitable.

But the unprecedented nature of the voting lends a patina of plausibility to the allegations.

Ultimately, this is a question which we ought to be able to answer. If we can count almost 150 million ballots then we can determine, to the satisfaction of any reasonable person, that the results are valid. Trump and his supporters, who are nothing if not loyal, are leveling the extraordinary accusation that voter fraud changed the outcome of a presidential election. If they can’t show us indisputable proof, then their charge will turn out to be not merely unfounded, but reckless.

Biden, meanwhile, vows that he will strive to unify a divided America.

You needn’t be a pessimist to wonder whether that’s possible.

But if Biden is to succeed even partially at this seemingly Sisyphean task, then he must never forget that about 72 million of the people who likely will become his constituents in January voted for Trump.

And however tempting it might be to dismiss that sizable group as beneath contempt, as some of the more strident left-wing zealots do, I hope Biden will be more circumspect.

The more vociferous anti-Trumpers, it seems to me, conflate every vote for the president into an enthusiastic endorsement of the man’s abrasive personality.

This is silly.

As silly as contending that each of the 77 million or so Americans who voted for Biden did so solely because they were overwhelmed by his charisma and keen vision for a great American revival, and not at all influenced by their disdain for Trump.

Only those two had a legitimate chance to win the election. And the vast majority of voters, quite naturally, want to support a candidate who can win.

I hope Biden understands that some Trump voters, and possibly a significant percentage of them, find Trump the man at times reprehensible and consider his Twitter account a torrent of juvenile putdowns. Yet they support his administration’s pursuit of tax cuts and a reasonable curbing of government regulations because those approaches best reflect their personal preferences.

In any case the election is no mandate for Biden to pursue a drastic recasting of this country.

The mistake that I think many people have made since Trump became a candidate in 2015 is to treat his tweets as if they matter as much as, if not more than, his policies.

It seems to me that many of Trump’s most ardent opponents have been seduced by his cult of personality as thoroughly as his bootlickers have been.

I’m often appalled by the man’s apparent lack of anything resembling tact. But I don’t take this personally. He’s certainly not speaking (or tweeting) to me.

To fret obsessively about his sophomoric nicknames for his foes, as though these slurs affect our lives, and our nation, more than his actions as the head of the executive branch, is to give him what all bullies crave, which is attention.

Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.