Be glad the Electoral College did its job

The Electoral College has done its job without controversy and confirmed Donald Trump as president.

Online petitions aren’t going to cut it. Signing them is too easy. The petition that counted was the election.

Be glad. Be very glad — even if you’re a sworn progressive bitter that November’s election gave Trump an electoral win despite Hillary Clinton getting more votes. Maybe especially if that’s who you are.

The Electoral College has outlived any usefulness it might have had in the day of the Founding Fathers, when information traveled no faster than people — which is to say, no faster than a really fast horse.

But a revolt this year wouldn’t have helped the cause of removing this anachronism from the Constitution, any more than it could have kept Trump from becoming president. It would only have deepened the chasms that divide America and plunge us into chaos.

Our favorite fantasy was that Democratic electors would join Republicans and elect Mitt Romney president. Romney did, after all, get more votes when he lost to Barack Obama than Trump did when he beat Clinton. But anything the electors did would have ended up in Congress, where representatives would have confirmed Trump. And been right to do it.

Now that that’s over, two things should happen:

• People serious about the Electoral College problem should join the National Popular Vote movement, in which states agree to allocate their electors based on the winner of the national majority. California is among 11 states that have passed it. To learn more, go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

• Everybody who signed petitions, marched and otherwise expressed hope for an electors’ revolt should turn their energy toward protecting the fabric of environmental protection, civil rights and other civic values that Trump’s administration, based on his cabinet choices, aims to unravel.

Those values are under siege. The administration will be packed with climate change deniers, voices of antiMuslim bigotry and opponents of clean air and water standards, voting rights protection, women’s reproductive rights, gay rights and on and on. Not a single cabinet nominee appears to support the traditional mission of the department he or she is supposed to run.

Online petitions aren’t going to cut it. Signing them is too easy to give them real power. The petition that counted was the election. Fighting the menacing prospects will require a personal commitment of time or money — ideally both — to causes you believe in and organizations capable of fighting to defend them.

At this point, we might normally quote a famous statesman or woman — Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill — to drive home the point. But in the age of Twitter, the president-elect’s preferred form of communication, we can’t find a better sentiment than George Takei’s.

“Sorry,” he Tweeted last night. “We’re not going to ‘get over it.’ We’re going to fight. They’ll have to pry every right, every progress, every gain out of our hands.” Man the Enterprise. — San Jose Mercury News,

Digital First Media

Online petitions aren’t going to cut it. Signing them is too easy to give them real power. The petition that counted was the election. Fighting the menacing prospects will require a personal commitment of time or money — ideally both — to causes you believe in and organizations capable of fighting to defend them.