MEGAN MCARDLE: Questioning Legitimacy of Election Risks Civil War and Secession. “If elections lack legitimacy, then our officials, and the laws they make, are always up for contest. No one can make plans, because they don’t know how long the current regime will last. Worse still, the opponents of that regime will have few qualms about resorting to violence to hasten that end — nor will the regime hesitate to use terror and extralegal tactics to hold on to power. We’ve had such incidents in the U.S., but rarely, and so we have come to view the legitimacy of the democratic order as a sort of natural law that can be taken as a given. It isn’t so.”

We’re still suffering damage from Al Gore’s foolish decision to “un-concede” in 2000.