Got Dem Post-Election Blues?

The liberal freakout over the election is likely to turn into at least a four-year Broadway show (apparently Broadway is the only safe space for liberalism right now, to read the paranoid rantings of the mononoids of the left). Here’s the latest communication from The Nation, with my comments in brackets:

Dear Friend of The Nation,

A country in which a presidential candidate with a lead of almost 2 million votes doesn’t become president is not a democracy. It is a scandal. [No, it’s called the Constitution, but thanks for playing. And thanks for being so explicit that you hate the Constitution.]

The Electoral College is an antiquated institution responsible for giving us not only the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, but also now for elevating a bigoted, self-aggrandizing charlatan with no respect for the most fundamental tenets of our Republic to the highest office in the land. [At dinner with Sir Roger Scruton last week, Sir Roger observed that “bigot” is nowadays a word used by bigots for everyone who disagrees with them.] 

For more than a century and a half, The Nation, with the help of our readers, has led the fight to make our Union more perfect and our democracy more real. . . In 1877, the year The Nation began fighting against the Electoral College, a committee of 15 federal officials—including five Supreme Court justices—handed the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, even though his opponent, Samuel Tilden, had won 250,000 more votes in the November 1876 election. Keeping the Electoral College, The Nation warned, would only lead to similar troubles in the future. [Alternate headline: The Nation—irrelevant for 150 years!]

Never mind the solid republican and federalist arguments in favor of the Electoral College, but the fact that it has now, in the space of less than 20 years, spared the nation both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in the White House is enough to suggest it is divinely inspired.

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