Tomorrow the Electoral College meets in order to elect the next President of the United States. It may strike you as somewhat curious that the person we’ve been referring to as “president-elect” for some time now has in fact not been elected president yet. It may further strike you that a great many people have been saying repeatedly and with great fervor that we must do everything possible to prevent Trump from ascending to power, and that they are now apparently not willing to do anything at all. There have been a number of schemes concocted to deny Trump the presidency, but the Reasonable Adults insist that such a thing must not be done, that we must “respect the process.” This is, again, curious, since it was those very same Adults telling us throughout the entire campaign someone like Trump must not be allowed the powers of the presidency.

Clinton and Obama spent the entire election telling us that Trump was not simply bad but uniquely unqualified, a radical danger to democratic society. Clinton literally looked a reporter in the eyes and spoke the words, “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.” For them to now roll over and insist that we “give Trump a chance,” that we “work together” to make his presidency “successful” is worse than a betrayal; it is proof positive that there was never any faith involved in any of this, at all. Furthermore, it is this exact behavior, this sickening combination of histrionic grandstanding and moral cowardice, that drove voters away from “the establishment” and towards Trump in the first place. (Their mistake, of course, was failing to recognize that Trump is an even more extreme example of the same phenomenon. He has backpedaled in exactly the same way: insisting throughout the campaign that the current administration had brought America to the verge of collapse, and then reverting to smiles and platitudes as soon as the cards were actually on the table.) It’s been claimed that Trump “violated” or “destroyed” political norms in this election, but that’s only because the people who were supposed to be upholding those norms never actually bothered. No one who mattered ever put their foot down.

This is not to say that “democratic norms” are not real things – at least potentially. The “peaceful transfer of power” does have the real, justified purpose of preventing things from coming to blood, which is basically the point of doing politics in the first place. Politics is war by other means, and that’s a good thing, because war is the worst possible means of doing anything. But, as it’s been said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. You’d be hard pressed to find a more vivid example of cowardice than failing to press a vitally important case out of fear that it might spark a real conflict. What political norms allow us to do is not to avoid fights, but to fight without violence. Even if you believe that order is more important than justice, you don’t preemptively cede ground. You fight right up to the letter of the law.

The thing is, insisting that the Electoral College vote against Trump (as just one example of a possible tactic) is not any kind of destablization or whatever. It’s actually the exact opposite. The Electoral College is already part of the process; deciding the presidency is already its job. If it’s the Electoral College that elects the president, then the president isn’t elected until the Electoral College elects them. It’s pretty silly to claim that the Electoral College shouldn’t “overturn” the results of the election, considering that . . . the election isn’t actually over yet. This is as far as possible from a radical reinterpretation of the situation. It is merely a description of the currently-defined process – the very same process that the Reasonable Adults are insisting we accord the utmost respect. So, y’know, let’s do that. Let’s insist that the electors use their wisdom and judgment to choose the best candidate. Let the Electoral College do the job that it was designed to do. Not to mention that this approach would be significantly less radical than what happened in 2000, when the Supreme Court awarded the presidency on the basis of partisanship.

(Implying, of course, that if the process that we happen to have right now seems pointless, even unbelievably stupid, we ought to be able to change it. The fact that “that’s not going to happen” isn’t an excuse, it is the problem itself.)

So really the election shouldn’t even have been called until the process was actually over. Like, that’s what a “process” is: it’s the thing that tells you what you have to do in order to be done. While I’m generally opposed to any explanation that blames “modern society,” in this case I think there’s a point here. We don’t need to hear the election results the exact minute they become theoretically extrapolatable. The election was “called” for Trump long before the process was over, and it’s hardly radical Luddism to claim that this didn’t need to happen. There’s still a two-month gap before the new president actually takes office; we can afford to wait a few weeks for the process to actually finish. The votes should be fully tallied, the results should be subject to a routine light audit, all of that stuff. Wouldn’t that actually be really nice, if there were some time after the election where it was impossible for there to be any more political news, if we were forced to think about something better for a while?

Like, the fact that the election results aren’t actually being verified right now should be a point of rather heavy concern for people who think the Official Democratic Process is the most important thing in the world. See, that’s the thing: the people insisting on process, process above all aren’t actually following the process. They’re just going with the flow. The point of a real process is precisely to oppose this kind of behavior: to require that things be done the right way, even in the most unusual of cases.

Of course, the fact that we’re stuck here talking about this is a major part of the problem. No one needs to be convinced at this point. If there were something we could do about the situation, we’d be doing it. But there are people who do have the power to do things – maybe not to “fix” the situation, but at least to begin ameliorating it – and the fact that they’re not doing so tells us something. After all, if we had the capacity to remove Trump, we’d also have the capacity to remove any other president who, I don’t know, started a war of aggression, formalized a global assassination program, tore up the social safety net, armed fascists, sponsored genocide. Hypothetical stuff like that.

There’s a saying: when someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. It’s commonplace to hear claims that the Democrats are “spineless” or “incompetent,” that they “roll over” too easily, that they aren’t “tough” enough. But this is silly: we’re talking about some of the richest and most powerful people in the world, with access to an infrastructure that commands an unimaginably vast amount of money, information, and even personal action. You’d need one hell of a theory to explain why people like this would fail to do something that they actually wanted to. There is a much simpler explanation: this is what Democrats actually believe. Clinton didn’t “fail” to make her case during the election; she made exactly the case she wanted to. Someone who has the means and opportunity to fight for you and does not do so is telling you that they do not care. These people are not on our side.