Rebecca:

Hearing a lot of this kind of stuff right now:

But the unceasing attempts to delegitimize and undermine him are as childish and petty as Trump himself. What is lost in the hyperventilation of journalists, pundits and politicians is the will of the people who elected him president.

Trump is a disrupter. That is his purpose and the reason he was elected. American elites stopped serving their constituencies long ago. For pundits and politicians to disregard the will of voters and float ideas for Trump’s removal flies in the face of the democratic society they are supposedly trying to save.

In this telling, removing Donald Trump from office before the end of his term would amount to a coup.

Meh.

Why I don’t buy this line of thinking.

• It defines the “will of the people” in odd fashion. Remember — Trump does — that he lost the popular vote. “The people” had something other than a Trump presidency in mind. (Unless you decide California doesn’t count, I guess.)

• Live by the countermajoritarianism, die by the countermajoritarianism. We’re told it’s ok Trump won the Electoral College anyway, because the Constitution has countermajoritarian features. What almost never gets talked about is why it has such features.

Here’s what the Federalist Papers have to say about that:

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: “For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,” yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

You know what? I’m going to say Electoral College was designed to keep people like Donald Trump out of office. It failed.

• It’s not a coup if it’s lawful. Almost nobody’s suggesting Trump be deposed by force. Instead, the two avenues to removal — the 25th Amendment and impeachment — are both described in the Constitution.

In the case of the 25th Amendment, it would be Trump’s own vice president and cabinet that ruled him unfit to serve. These people, having been chosen for their positions by the president, are unlikely to take that route unless extraordinary circumstances required it. Impeachment would take the support of Republicans, who control both houses of Congress. If removal happens, it’ll because Trump’s closest political allies judged it should be so, and done through legal means.

Trump won the election through legal means. (As far as we currently know.) That deserves a fair amount of deference, even if we find it distasteful. But that deference is not to be unlimited, and the law pretty explicitly recognizes that the “will of the peoople” can sometimes be wrong.

In this case, it probably was.

— Joel