It Will Not Stop

     Therefore, we mustn’t expect it to.

     (Yes, yes, I know I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but it’s Monday. Shouldn’t everyone get a break on Monday, insufferably longwinded Web pundits included?)

     The Democrats, the Media That Once Were, and the whole corpus of left-wing activist organizations are determined that America not regard Donald Trump as fairly and legitimately the president of these United States. The same forces tried the same tactics on George W. Bush after h is narrow victory in 2000. They didn’t work then, but the current iteration shows enough contrasts to that one to give them hope this time around.

     In 2000, the popular vote margin for Al Gore was about half a million votes: 0.5% of the total. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin over Donald Trump is over 2.8 million votes, or 2.1% of the total. To those who believe the Electoral College to be unfair – “anti-democratic” is the usual attack – this strengthens the case against Trump.

     In 2000, the loser was Al Gore, who had been credibly accused of venality while serving as Vice President, and who attempted to deflect the odium merely by claiming that there was “no controlling legal authority” for his offense. In 2016, loser Hillary Clinton managed to deflect criticism of her behavior as Secretary of State through adroit use of her allies in the media.

     In 2000, Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. Its electoral college votes were essential to George W. Bush’s victory. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried her home state of New York – and for lagniappe, her opponent is also from New York.

     Finally, in 2000 there were no intimations of foreign involvement in the campaign or the election. In 2016, accusations of foreign involvement – specifically, by the government of Russia – have been many, though none have yet been substantiated. Here's one of the more recent flowerings.

     Will all that be enough? Doubtful, but the matter will remain unknown until the EC votes are actually counted. What’s clear is that whether or not the Democrats’ attempt to persuade a few electors to cast their ballots for someone other than Trump succeeds, their drive to characterize Trump’s victory as illegitimate will continue.

     It’s their one and only hope for preserving the Obama Administration’s gains for the totalitarianization of these United States, most important among them the imposition of ObamaCare.

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     The Left is impatient with setbacks. It regards no defeat as final, even after the results are indisputable. Nor does it view any institution, however venerable or well regarded, as immune to attack should that institution stand in its way.

     We saw this in 2000. We saw more of it in 2008, when the Sturm und Drang over Barack Hussein Obama’s dubious “natural born citizenship” erupted. And of course we’re seeing it now. There’s no question that its efforts will continue. The sole question is how extreme its tactics will become.

     The “street protests” of the first weeks after Election Day appear to have run their course. While they persisted, there were many reports of violence -- against persons and organizations that had supported Trump or were believed to have done so. Apparently the net effect was negligible.

     The campaign by various entertainment celebrities is ongoing. However, Americans have apparently learned that one’s political acumen is not determined by how much air time or how many column-inches one gets in the popular press. Here too, the net effect appears to be negligible.

     The weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Media That Once Were will persist until those media are no more. The news business is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party. When its masters issue their orders, its troops advance in lockstep. Yet the disaffection of ordinary Americans from those media has proceeded smartly these past few decades. A sense of impending collapse hangs about them...a sense that their time is almost up. If the recent frantic retrenchments at the New York Times and the Washington Post are any indication, the end is very near.

     Perhaps the Left’s baton is being passed. Organizations such as Common Cause, which was once a largely nonpartisan force, might soon become the Left’s vanguard forces. Such “grass roots” activism, if specifically directed toward the abolition of the Electoral College, might yet have results the Left would approve. The pressure on Capitol Hill might make Congress give the proposition its attention, though should the matter be submitted to the state legislatures as the Constitution directs, the retention of the Electoral College is virtually certain.

     Only one thing is certain: The Left will not relent. Its focus on eliminating the remaining barriers to its ascendancy is absolute. The Left must always retain the option of suborning an election, whether by procedural trickery, the importation of illegitimate votes, or the delegitimization of an opposition candidate. Mere Americans cannot be allowed any say in how we’re governed.

     When power is the one and only goal – when one contestant recognizes neither moral nor practical constraints – the war is total. In an ancient phrase it’s “war to the knife,” where the alternatives aren’t win or lose, but win or die.

     An underappreciated movie, The Fourth War, concludes with a voiceover comment from Harry Dean Stanton:

     “They fought with everything they had....When Albert Einstein was asked with what weapons the Third World War would be fought, he replied ‘I don’t know,’ but the fourth war, he said, would be fought with stones.”

     The ideological war between freedom and bondage will be of that sort.