Donald Trump won Tuesday’s election with 305 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 233. So the papers say. But in fact, Clinton triumphed in the only way that counts — i.e. in terms of the popular vote, beating her opponent by more than two hundred thousand votes, according to the latest tally.

This means that Tuesday’s election was nearly an identical repeat of 2000, when Bush also edged out his Democratic opponent thanks to a timely intervention by a Republican-controlled Supreme Court, but lost the popular vote by roughly the same margin — 0.5 percent instead of 0.35. For the second time in sixteen years, in other words, a Democrat has won the vote but lost the race due to a sclerotic eighteenth-century institution known as the Electoral College.

This should be the stuff of headlines from coast to coast, yet instead the news is being buried deep inside if it’s referenced at all. Obama didn’t mention it in his comments yesterday, and neither did Clinton in her short concession speech. “Donald Trump is going to be our president,” was all she could say. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power.”