Members of the Electoral College meet in their state capitals Monday to confirm Donald Trump as the duly elected 45th President of the United States, despite the fevered opposition of Hollywood movie stars and desperate Democrats.
Pundits and professors and Hillary Clinton herself are claiming the election was stolen from her, but that's just sour grapes. Even if Russian President Vladimir Putin did orchestrate the hacks of the Democratic National Committee's computers, even if FBI director James Comey did have some ulterior motive in announcing, late in the campaign, that he was reopening the investigation into Ms. Clinton's e-mails, neither of them strong-armed her into ignoring Wisconsin or taking Michigan for granted.
An unpopular candidate ran a lacklustre campaign and lost in the Electoral College, and that's all there is to it. But that isn't stopping some partisans from trying to make mischief with the college.
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Nearly five million citizens have signed a petition urging Republican electors to vote for someone other than Mr. Trump. And a group of actors, led by Martin Sheen (president Jed Bartlet on The West Wing) produced a video urging Republican electors to vote for another candidate.
"You have the position, the authority and the opportunity to go down in the history books as an American hero who changed the course of history," was their message, which has been watched more than a million times on YouTube.
But there is no sign that electors are listening. While Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, who is spearheading an effort to get GOP electors to vote against their own party, claims that 20 potential ship-jumpers are thinking about it, only one has come forward. In any case, 37 defections would be needed to deprive Mr. Trump of the 270 Electoral College votes required for a majority.
The Associated Press interviewed 330 of 358 electors, and found no signs of a revolt. In the entire history of the United States, only 157 "faithless electors," have defied the popular vote in their state, and their defections never changed a result.
If, for some reason, enough GOP electors did vote against Mr. Trump to deprive him of a win in the Electoral College, it would enrage the 63 million people who voted for the Republican nominee. (That almost three million more voted for Ms. Clinton means nothing: The Electoral College decides, not the popular vote.)
Even if, when the result is formally read out on Jan. 6 before the combined houses of the new Congress, it turned out there was no clear winner in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives would then be tasked, under the Constitution, with choosing a president. The House has a huge Republican majority, and the chances those Republicans would choose Ms. Clinton are slightly less than nil.
None of this lessens the fragility of Mr. Trump's mandate. He lost the popular vote, he is widely disliked by the #nevertrump movement within his own party and there appears to be damning evidence that Russia orchestrated the campaign of DNC e-mail leaks specifically to undermine Ms. Clinton and improve Mr. Trump's chances.
Arizona Republican Senator John McCain called Sunday for a select Senate committee on cyberwarfare, in light of Russian efforts to swing the election. "There's no doubt they were interfering and no doubt that it was a cyberattack," he told CNN's Jake Tapper. "The question is now how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do, and so far we've been totally paralyzed."
But it is impossible to prove that the Russian hacks swung enough votes to tip the election.
There is every reason to wish to escape the future that awaits the United States and the world under President Donald Trump. His racist, destructive agenda; his erratic behaviour; his reckless tweeting, his choice of cabinet secretaries whose mandate, in many cases, appears to be to dismantle their department; his ability, depending on how many judges depart during his term(s), to shape the Supreme Court's direction for a generation, are all grounds for great concern.
But the election was valid. Americans who don't like the result should accept it nonetheless, and start work on organizing for the midterms in 2018.