Today, Joe Biden will be elected president by the Electoral College. If you think this is some injustice or travesty or fraud, and that Donald Trump is being wronged, you are in error. It is you, the believer, who has been wronged.

All presidents help or harm their country in ordinary ways, and to varying degrees. Trump has inflicted many of those ordinary harms and benefits on the nation, much as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and all their predecessors did. Just because these harms and benefits are ordinary doesn’t mean they are mild. Indeed, as one would expect from the executive branch of a trillion-dollar leviathan, our presidents’ policies reshape our country for better and for worse.