As
Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote stretches out to 1.5 points
and may grow more with ballots still being counted in California, the
sour grapes caucus in the Democratic Party is getting louder.
This is the fourth time in history that Democrats have won the popular
vote but lost in the Electoral College. And this one is shaping up to
be the widest discrepancy since 1876 when just one elector and the
threat of renewed civil war stood between Republican Rutherford Hayes
and Democrat Samuel Tilden.
What’s
that you say? The Electoral College is undemocratic? Well, yeah. That’s
the point.
Pressure is growing on members of the Electoral College to refuse to
vote for the winners of their states. Given Donald Trump’s 74-vote lead
in the Electoral College based on state returns, the effort seems to be
a symbolic one at best.
More tantalizing for Democrats though, is the claim from “top computer
scientists” that they see evidence of electronic ballot rigging in
Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The fact that the experts made
their case to the remnants of Clinton’s campaign that she dispute the
official election results has allowed some embittered supporters of
Clinton to remain in denial about the actual result.
But as data dervish Nate Silver explained Tuesday night on Twitter, the
computer guys might have benefitted from some practical knowledge of
politics. The claims don’t bear even modest scrutiny once you take into
account the composition of the counties in question.
Part of the problem here, of course, is that many Democrats believed
their nominee’s campaign rhetoric that Trump’s election would bring
about the apocalypse.
Here, some
Democrats have fallen into the same trap that led Republicans,
including the now president-elect, to search for conspiracy theories
and loopholes to invalidate the Obama presidency all the way through
his first term.*
It’s sick stuff. [
FULL]