This likely will be the final entry on my blog about the popular vote result of the 2016 presidential election. I believe I need to make this point.

Some of my social media acquaintances have been yapping about a peculiar aspect of the popular vote, which Hillary Rodham Clinton captured over Donald J. Trump, who won enough electoral votes to be elected president of the United States.

They’ve been saying that “if you take away California,” Trump would have won the popular vote by 1.4 million ballots.

My reaction: huh? You can’t do that.

Clinton won California’s 55 electoral votes by winning more than 4 million votes in that state. It helped pad her national vote, which ended up around 2.8 million ballots cast for her than for Trump.

I get that Trump has been elected president. He won it fair and square. His team cobbled together a stunning electoral strategy that hardly anyone saw developing. He scored upsets in many of those “swing states” that had voted twice for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Thus, the outcome was determined.

But you can’t manipulate the popular vote margin by removing certain states from the equation. All 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, are calculated in the final vote total.

Period. End of argument.

The debate over whether to throw out the Electoral College will proceed. I’m still undecided on that issue. I like the idea of giving additional clout to smaller states. However, the margin of the loser’s popular vote total in 2016 does diminish whatever “mandate” the winner will seek to claim.

The argument over Clinton’s popular vote victory, though, need not get muddled and conflated with nonsensical scenarios, such as deleting one or two states’ votes from the total count.

We are, after all, the United States of America.

I’m done now with this issue.

I know I am sounding a bit repetitive to some of you. Maybe I’m far too repetitive to suit you.

That’s just too damn bad. I’m going to say it again … with emphasis.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s popular vote margin over Donald J. Trump is expanding. It’s now at slightly more than 2.5 million votes. It’s likely to grow even more, although I’m beginning to think we’re getting quite close to the end of the ballot tallying.

Oh, yes. We have that recount in Wisconsin with which to contend. Don’t expect much of a change there. Or in Pennsylvania or Michigan, two other states that might get their votes recounted.

Here’s my point. The president-elect is going to find a growing voice of discord among his constituents if and when he tries to foist his agenda on the nation.

Donald J. Trump’s vote deficit is approaching record levels among those candidates who won the presidential election while losing the popular vote. He and Clinton’s vote percentages are zeroing in on the Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel Tilden contest of 1876.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

What’s fascinating, too, is that Clinton’s popular vote total mirrors what the polls were indicating on the eve of Election Day. Trump, though, benefited by his ability to flip several states that had voted twice for President Obama, enabling him to win the Electoral College votes he needed to become president.

I am not calling for a wholesale reform of the electoral system.

I merely want to caution the president-elect to mindful of the hurdles he and his team are going to face governing a country with a widening vote deficit.

Go slow, Mr. President-elect. Stop playing to your “base” and remember that more of us out here voted against you than voted for you. Got it? Good. Now … proceed.

Believe me, I’m not going to belabor this point.

The thought just popped into my noggin, though, about the popular vote lead that Hillary Rodham Clinton is running up on the next president, Donald J. Trump.

It has passed 2 million votes. They’re still counting ’em. The lead might grow even more.

The thought is this: At what point does this circumstance begin to undermine the effectiveness of the “winner” of a presidential election?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307326-cook-clinton-passes-2m-in-popular-vote-lead

Trump won the votes that matter, in the Electoral College. Clinton won the actual balloting. Two million votes comprises a substantial margin … even for the “loser.”

I don’t necessarily want to see a change in the way we elect presidents. Nor do I think Clinton should challenge formally the results in three key swing states.

The issue, though, of this widening popular vote margin between the president-elect and the candidate he defeated seems to be inching closer to some critical mass that could undermine seriously the next president’s legislative agenda.