Winning may not be everything, but losing isn’t anything.
Second place in an election does not count. Nobody remembers Alf Landon, except as a footnote to history. Not only losing to FDR by a landslide, he actively SUPPORTED most of the New Deal. It might be noted, that Alf Landon was also a Progressive, one of the RINOs of the Great Depression years, and the primary reason the New Deal was never fully dismantled when Republicans regained full control in 1953.