Rather like those much touted recounts (which ended up giving more votes to Donald Trump), the liberal-left effort to overthrow the November election has ended with a whimper, not a bang.

So can we all take a breath and go back to our holiday shopping now?

Of course, there was the occasional “faithless elector” — like the guy in Maine who voted for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton, but then sometimes “movements” just don’t turn out the way you think they will. And there was the elector from Texas who announced his decision to not vote for Trump in a New York Times op-ed.

What the effort to recruit Trump voters to stray from the fold did point out is a whole lot of unmitigated ugliness — not to mention hypocrisy — on the left.

Now we’re thinking death threats and harassing emails and phone calls might not be the best way to win friends or influence Republican electors who might not thrilled with the vote they felt duty-bound to cast yesterday.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electors got a police escort to the capital in Harrisburg. Michigan’s electors also reported an inordinate number of threats.

Michael Banerian, a 22-year-old college student, told the Detroit News, “You have people saying ‘you’re a hateful bigot, I hope you die,’” he told the Detroit News. The paper verified several death threats, including one in which the writer vowed to “put a bullet” in Banerian’s mouth.

Sure, there were a lot of electors out there whose first choice would not have been Donald Trump, but at the end of the day, they showed respect for the process, for the Constitution and for the stability of the republic.

Meanwhile the left is becoming truly unhinged — which is hardly a productive way to expend energy and refocus the Democratic Party.

And by the way, did anyone tell these geniuses that throwing the election to the House would actually have the same result — a Trump presidency — just with more angst?

— The Boston Herald,

Dec. 20