The "Mind Lock Gambit"

This morning, I was listening to NPR in the car on the way into work when a guest suggested that Hillary Clinton would have won the election if the Russians hadn't provided "significant help" to Donald Trump during the election. I laughed out loud.

After all of the progressive angst, the street protests, the "fake news" accusations, the FBI recriminations, the recounts, the futile and stupid attempt to subvert the Electoral College, and now, calls to abolish the Electoral College, there remain more than a few progressives who simply will not accept the fact that Donald Trump won the election. In every way possible (and in some ways that are impossible) they will continue to work to delegitimize him. That's okay, I suppose, but at the same time is kind of pathetic.

John Kass sees the humor in all of this when he writes about the nightmare that is the never-ending election:

Yet the nightmare continued, on and on, with much wailing and shrieking and whining and crying and screeching and whimpering. It wouldn't die, crawling upon the snow like a relentless, severed hand from some White Walker in "Game of Thrones."

"It's over," said a guy I half-invented to help with an awkward transition. "Hillary Clinton will not be president. Donald Trump will be president."

Now, after all this time, you dare tell me that "it's over"?

I'd like to trust you, but you might be peddling Fake News.

Most Americans hoped to put presidential politics behind us weeks and weeks ago. But the nightmare continued.

Indeed. It seems that the Russian meme has legs—at least on NPR and MSNBC and CNN. Kass makes fun of the meme by calling it the "Vladimir Putin Mind Lock gambit." He writes:

Somehow, through the power of his mind, Putin forced Hillary Clinton to run a terrible campaign and insult millions of voters so much that they couldn't stand her.

Putin also made sure she had no message. He just sucked all her good messaging right out of her and left only the bad messages.

Bad, bad Putin.

Suggesting that the Russians were responsible for Clinton's loss is like suggesting that half of the voting public are "deplorable." Then again, there are more than a few progressives who believe that both are true.

UPDATE:
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On the subject of the electoral college and the argument that it should be abolished, nothing illustrates the reasons why it should be maintained more than the following Ramirez cartoon:

If the popular vote ruled, the populations of fewer than eight states (most, conveniently Democrat) would decide the election.

Of course, the increasingly far-left NYT is for abolition of the Electoral College. Their argument is dissected by Jay Caruso:

It’s almost as if the New York Times editorial board was taken over by fools from Media Matters, Salon, Slate, and Think Progress. It is the only rational explanation for their unhinged rant against the electoral college in their Monday edition. It is bereft of any facts about the actual creation of the electoral college. Instead, it relies on revisionist history, claiming the electoral college was birthed due to slavery:

The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol of America’s original sin. When slavery was the law of the land, a direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states, with their large disenfranchised populations. Counting those men and women as three-fifths of a white person, as the Constitution originally did, gave the slave states more electoral votes.

This kind of thinking is lazy in that it doesn’t seek to make an argument, but instead, projects on to others the motives the Times editorial can use to shame people into agreeing with them. “The Electoral College exists due to slavery. Why on earth would you continue to defend such a system?” They don’t rely on facts or logic. Their goal is to tug at emotional heartstrings and hope people won’t pay attention to their complete lack of historical coherence.

That's it!! Electoral college = slavery. The debate is over, right?