Clinton Cliffhanger

   Minorities in America have long run up against an advancement barrier best described this way: You have to be twice as good to get half as far.
   If, as seems likely, Hillary Clinton succeeds in becoming the first woman to be elected President of the United States, cynics will rationalize her victory by saying, "Sure, she won, but look who she was up against. The other guy was such a poor candidate that winning, for her, was not that big a deal."
   Others will even take it as proof that the election was "rigged" against their favored candidate, who has been described as Mr. Macho Mouth, all talk and no knowledge. Conspiracy theorists will see a nefarious plot in every aspect of the campaign, both among Democrats and Republicans as well, claiming that key GOP leaders, angry that they didn't get their way during the primary season, agreed to get together with Democrats, the better to smear the name of The Anointed One.
   The new Administration, they might say, will resort to backroom politics as usual to put metaphorical screws to the "regular folks" who overcame the elite opposition and succeeded in putting their Mighty Macho Mouth at the top of the Republican ballot.
   Whether any of this be true, potentially true, desirably true or provably false will matter not at all to the True Believers. They know what they know, and they refuse to be confused by fact or reality.
   So whoever tops the chart with a popular vote, there will still be the Electoral College to attack with accusations of corruption and collusion in picking the person preferred by the so-called elite to be President.
   No matter who that turns out to be, there will be a chorus of whiners claiming the final choice was not legitimate, and should be overturned.
   The danger is that this denial will lead to violence, amid calls for a complete change in a system that has served America well for more than 220 years, since the Constitution was ratified in 1789.
   Then again, it may be that the whiners have not read the Constitution, and will refuse to let history and tradition interfere with what these True Believers "absolutely know to be true."
   In one way, however, they are correct in claiming that "the system is rigged." It is arranged in such a fashion as to prevent dictatorial demagogues from becoming President.