The Left’s goal, as it was during and after the bitter 36-day Florida recount in 2000, is to delegitimize the incoming president because he is a Republican. Democracy isn’t working properly if it puts non-leftists in power, left-wingers reason, so all GOP chief executives must be vigorously opposed.

[…]

But after eight years of President Obama’s Saul Alinsky-inspired tactics, including the near-constant vilification of opponents and the dangerous racial polarization the 44th president has cultivated, tensions are much, much rawer now than they were in 2000.

Protests aimed at undermining the president-elect’s legitimacy began springing up in the wee hours of Wednesday, Nov.9, after TV networks called the race for Trump. Soon after that, this writer saw and spoke to a handful of protesters who showed up at the new Trump International Hotel a few blocks away from the White House just after 4 a.m. On Oct. 1, “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice, [No] Peace” with the second “no” expressed using a red circle with a slash, were spray-painted at the hotel’s entrance. On Nov. 12, a photo circulated of a protester holding a sign reading “Rape Melania,” a reference to the incoming first lady, at a large demonstration outside that hotel.

[…]

Black Lives Matter released a statement this week denouncing Trump and urging resistance to his presidency.

“Our mandate has not changed: organize and end all state-sanctioned violence until all Black Lives Matter,” the mini-manifesto begins. It refers to Trump’s victory as “the election of a white supremacist to the highest office in American government.”