EDITORIAL: Accepting the results?

Progressives were indignant a few weeks ago that Donald Trump wouldn’t commit to accepting the results of the presidential election, whatever that meant. The New York Times huffed that the GOP candidate seemed to “cast doubt on American democracy.”

Funny, then, the hysterical response from many on the left following Mr. Trump’s stunning victory on Tuesday.

In our western neighbor, for example, folks with the Yes California Independence Campaign hope to gain new momentum. They plan to have an advisory question on the 2018 ballot. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, posted on his Twitter account that a Trump victory would lead him to fund a “legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation.”

Meanwhile, in Oregon, two Portland resident have filed petitions to hold a similar referendum to gauge voter sentiment for secession, The Associated Press reported this week.

Of course, none of this will ever happen. Legal secession would require amending the Constitution and gaining the support of 38 other states. But the Trumpophobes can dream, can’t they?

“It would frankly be better off if we were our own nation,” Marcos Ruiz Evans, vice president of the California independence campaign told the AP. “Our ship can sail on its own.”

But what to do with the apostates? Almost 3 million Californians — about one-third of those who went to the polls — pulled the lever for Donald Trump. Will the new nation have room for all the necessary re-education camps?

Perhaps a better and more manageable approach would be to confine the secession push to the state’s traditionally deep blue regions near Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Why, such a campaign might even generate national support!

In the end, however, those so full of despair over a Trump presidency that they would consider forming their own country need to consider one vital question: Does the world really need another Venezuela?