That is the real issue.
That popular votes don't count. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say explicitly that we have a "right to vote for the President". That idea is, as is the "right to privacy", a right which most Americans (and most legal decisions) have inferred from what is in the Constitution.
We owe a "democratically elected President" to Andrew Jackson. Since his time, the principle that our Presidents should be elected democratically has been a widely held one. Various laws have been passed to fortify that notion.
If you believe in democracy, then the illegitimacy of Resident Bush and (to borrow from Bugliosi) the "criminality" of the current USSC is crystal clear and without question. If, on the other hand, you don't believe in democracy, then you cannot understand what all the fuss over the last election is.
Believe it or not, I am on the fence. At times I fervently agree with Hamilton, that "the masses are asses" and yet, so many have sacrificed so much so that we can decide who our President is via a democractic vote, it is sad to me that a USSC could rip that away and so many be content to sit idlely by and let it happen with no apparent thought about what has been lost.
The willingness by some (read Republicans and the popular media) to give up a right so dear to so many without a whimper should not come as a surprise, I suppose. In an age where Reagan babies have grown up to trust corporations more than they do their democratically elected representatives or even their neighbors, where the absolutely idiotic notion that "government should be run like a business" is often embraced, where so many prefer "virtual reality" to the genuine article, anything is possible.
bcnu,
Mikem
