lections have consequences, as the cliché goes, and those consequences are unpredictable, perhaps never more unpredictable than when no one wins the election — but someone takes office anyway. When that happens, the country is largely defenseless, as we learned so disastrously in 2000.

That was when we had five unprincipled Supreme Court justices to thank for promoting an actual (but uncounted) loser to the presidency. George W. Bush proceeded to reward the country’s wary trust by blithely ignoring warnings of a terrorist attack, then using 9/11 to jingo up the fear-laden public mood and urge us to go shopping while he (and a complicit Democratic Congress) started wars that have yet to end. (For reasons having nothing to do with decency or justice, Nancy Pelosi led the opposition to impeaching this war-criminal president.) For extra credit, Bush presided over a bipartisan wave of unchecked criminal capitalism that brought the economy to its knees and Democrats to the White House.

The growing push to defeat Trump by any of the following means:

• Taking the CIA's warmongering on faith and blaming Vladimir Putin for everything,
• Accusing the FBI,
• Pressing for majority rule despite the electoral college,
• Protesting voters being stripped from the rolls,
• Objecting to intimidation at the polls,
• Trying to undo the blocking of votes by those lacking IDs,
• Remedying broken and insufficient and unverifiable machines,
• Counting paper ballots where they exist,
• Threatening impeachment over Trump's unconstitutional presents and emoluments from foreign nations unless he sells his foreign businesses,
• Arguing for disqualification on the ground of mental illness,
• Praying and fantasizing,

would be far more energized and popular if the "defeated" candidate were Bernie Sanders, who -- judging by all existing polling (and theorizing what his general election campaign would have looked like) -- would almost certainly not have been defeated by any means in the first place.

There are less than 48 hours to go before the Electoral College begins casting its votes. 

Here is a petition to sign that might make a difference:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ask-hillary-clinton-to-3?source=c.fwd&r_by=1398470

The desperate search for a successful Hail Mary to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president is down to the wire.  The attempts can be easily seen by many as pollyannish.  But we honor such individual acts of extreme clarity in John Kennedy's PROFILES IN COURAGE.  

And given the specter of a Trump presidency, this could be one of them. 

In the final moment, it all rests on Hillary Clinton.  Given the legal strictures of the Twelfth Amendment, she may be the only one who can possibly stop a Trump presidency.

Here's the petition to sign asking her to do just that:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ask-hillary-clinton-to-3?source=c.fwd&r_by=1398470

Today, Pope Francis released the annual World Day of Peace Message for January 1, 2017, called “Nonviolence—A Style of Politics for Peace.” This is the Vatican’s fiftieth World Day of Peace message, but it’s the first statement on nonviolence, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—in history.

We need to make “active nonviolence our way of life,” Francis writes at the start, and suggests nonviolence become our new style of politics. “I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values,” Francis writes. “May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life.  When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking.  In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.”