His thinking seeming to slip into the past tense, he told 1,000 supporters in a packed hotel ballroom 20 blocks from Madison Square Garden -- where he found basketball stardom playing for the New York Knicks -- that he'll soon make his plans known.

"I believe history will write that we tried to change politics, to restore trust, and to defeat the politics of expediency," he said.

"We've brought core Democratic issues to the fore. When nobody was talking about the 44 million Americans without health insurance, we gave voice to the voiceless. When no one was talking about the 13 children who die every day from gun violence, we heard their cries."

On a more down-to-earth note -- if not crashing to earth -- Bradley invoked a football coaching legend in describing his congratulatory phone call to Al Gore.

"I just called the vice president to congratulate him on his victories tonight," he said. "He won. I lost. And on one level I agree with Vince Lombardi when he said winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Music captured the mood at his campaign party. As the first polls closed at 7 p.m., the blues echoed through a nearly empty room.

The campaign had told the Harlem-based Real Deal Soul Band to be ready to break into "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" if the night took a surprising turn for the better.

The cue never came.

The crowd eventually did, with the ballroom filling up. Wearing stony expressions, dozens of key supporters assembled on stage at 9 p.m. to await a concession speech everyone knew would come.

It happened shortly before 9:30 p.m. as Bradley told the crowd he had called Gore.

"Keep running, Bill!" yelled a supporter from the crowd.

Before and after the speech, closed-circuit televisions throughout the room played a Bradley campaign film featuring clips of Bradley, his wife Ernestine and such high-profile supporters as Harvard professor Cornel West, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and actor Harvey Keitel.

The film played in a loop, over and over, never reaching an end.

Young Bradley aides, who have spent months working in his West Orange, N.J., office, had already converged on New York City for a few nights of partying.

Other supporters brought Mardi Gras beads, determined to celebrate Fat Tuesday if not Super Tuesday.

Volunteers wearing blue "Team Bradley" identification passes nibbled snacks and waited for something, anything, to cheer.

Many had never worked on a campaign before, like Ory Brown of New York, an opera singer who spent her free afternoons helping the Bradley campaign.

"All I know is what I did," Brown said. "I worked really hard and I voted, and that's all I can do."