The Electoral College vote is usually a legal formality, a minor news story scarcely noticed by anyone who isn’t directly involved in the process. Yet in their quest to sabotage the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s administration before he even takes office, Democrats managed to turn the 2016 Electoral College vote into another humiliating defeat for their own leader, Hillary Clinton.

It’s hard to keep track of how many times Clinton has lost the 2016 election now. Jill Stein’s absurd recount theatrics wasted millions of left-wing dollars – and millions of taxpayer dollars, too! – to accomplish a second validation of Clinton’s loss in several key states.

Democrats then sank deep into a fantasy about Clinton’s popular-vote lead somehow overturning the results of the actual election, but everyone and their uncle knows that the winner is not decided by the total number of ballot-box votes.

Now the “faithless elector” fantasy is blowing up in their faces.

It was supposed to be a mighty Faculty Room revolt, in which the Electoral College would fail American voters for their moral incompetence, and send their choice for President packing. By Monday afternoon, the only faithless electors changing their votes were a handful of Clinton electors who refused to cast their ballots for Madame President as expected.

The faithless elector fantasy would be sad and pathetic if it wasn’t so disturbing. Threats of violence were leveled at Trump electors, while filmmaker Michael Moore offered bribes for switched votes — an offer that would have brought felony charges for election tampering if anyone had been foolish enough to accept.

Meanwhile, the mediaspace is filled with anguish over Russia’s alleged hacking of the Democrats’ emails in a supposed bid to create chaos. If the faithless elector fantasy had played out as Democrats hoped, it would have destabilized the United States far more than anything the Kremlin could dream up. Did these people give no thought at all to the sheer chaos that would have been unleashed if they had succeeded? Did they think about the precedent they were setting for future close elections, of which there could be several in the years ahead?

Besides blind partisanship, the reason so many on the Left apparently gave little thought to the consequences of sabotaging the Electoral College is that they still don’t understand people voted for Trump. They’re still fussing over a “lesser of two evils” model of the 2016 contest, in which an electorate that threw up its hands and merely accepted Trump would be willing to heave a sigh and accept Clinton instead, if some post-election sucker punch knocked him out. They dangerously underestimate the rage that would be felt by positive Trump voters if they were disenfranchised by some squalid trick in December. For that matter, many people who didn’t vote for Trump would be enraged at the sabotage of a presidential election.

Clearly the Left hasn’t figured out how disgusting its crybully tactics are to normal, emotionally-healthy adult voters. However they felt about Trump, Clinton, or any other candidate they preferred, they want the election to be over. They don’t want endless screeching and moaning about the prospective evils of the Trump presidency blasting at them from every quarter of television and the Internet before the man even takes office. They didn’t want the election re-run three times between Thanksgiving and Christmas, even if Trump won all the re-runs.

Most Americans don’t want anyone undermining the legitimacy of an incoming administration even before the new President gets to the Oval Office. But Democrats are all-in on this strategy to de-legitimize Trump, and it’s turning their entire party into a pull-your-own-teeth convention of amateur dentists. We like to congratulate ourselves on the “peaceful transfer of power,” but that phrase has little meaning if the legitimacy of the victor is smeared prior to the inauguration.

These practitioners of “faithless elector” political reincarnation declared they had some special authority to declare Trump unfit for office – not because he allegedly violated any legal standard for the presidency, but because they really hate him, and hate the people who voted for him.

Accepting the legitimacy of an election does not require submission to the new President. Not a speck of agreement with Donald Trump is required to get through Inauguration Day. There isn’t even anything wrong with declaring unalterable opposition to everything on his agenda and hoping he fails, as Rush Limbaugh was robustly criticized for saying of President Obama in 2009. Vigorous dissent is a legitimate thing. But subverting our electoral system is quite another.

Democrats aren’t doing themselves any favors by churning out post-election Hot Takes about abolishing the Electoral College. Even casual voters are getting the message that left-wingers aren’t serious or principled in their opposition. The nation hungers for adult leadership, and Democrats are acting like children on a playground, demanding six strikes before they promise to give up the bat.

Even those who breathed a great sigh of relief on Election Night when it became clear Hillary Clinton would never be President must be feeling a bit sorry for her by now. Her supporters keep dragging her through electoral perdition, lining her up for one loss after another, all because they’re desperate to convince themselves Donald Trump isn’t really heading into the White House.

Clinton is trapped in a nightmare her voters refuse to wake up from. And her party is heading for a few more brutal election cycles if it doesn’t stop numbing itself with pipe dreams about how she didn’t really lose, and start thinking realistically about how President-elect Trump won.