From Michael Kinsley:
The smooth and yet dramatic reversal in direction that followed the transfer of presidential power in 2016 is a tribute to American democracy. Especially when you consider that twice in the past five presidential elections — that is, almost half the time — the majority turned over power to the minority (in straight who-got-more-votes terms). How many other nations could pull that off?
But smoothness isn’t everything. The constitutional rules for electing a president are almost comically complex, potentially involving both houses of Congress in different capacities, the entire Cabinet, 50 state legislatures and a two-thirds vote of the people running food trucks along Pennsylvania Avenue. And in the end, we’ve got a government run at almost every level by people whose philosophy of government most citizens voted against. Talk about the silent majority! Every morning we wake up to discover that some corner of government has been taken over by zealots of the right. Trump has been peacefully handed the keys to the car by folks who think he can’t drive and shouldn’t be on the road.
So the election of 2016 — another Republican “victory” on a technicality — still sticks in many a blue craw.