SNL‘s Hillary Clinton Begs an Elector to Go Rogue in This Love, Actually Parody

Tomorrow the Electoral College, per Article Two of the Constitution, meets to cast their votes affirming the results of last month’s election. Throughout America’s 200 plus year history, this has always been a done deal: the people vote, and a few weeks later the Electoral College abides by the will of the people and officially elects the winner. The College has never changed the result of an election before, despite a few stray electors going rogue in the past, but it’s not technically a fait accompli—electors aren’t legally bound to vote for the candidate who won their state in the election, although they could be charged a relatively small fine. Since Trump won the election, though, there’s been a movement to convince electors in states that he won to cast their votes for any other candidate. It picked up steam over the last few weeks, as Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead continued to grow (she’s up to almost 3 million more votes total than Trump), as Trump’s cabinet filled out with anti-government picks, and as more information came out about Russia’s connection to the John Podesta email leaks, with a few prominent liberal and “Never Trump” conservative pundits arguing for the Electoral College to act as a last-ditch effort to spare America from a Trump presidency. we might see more faithless electors than ever before, but it almost definitely won’t be enough to keep Trump out of the White House. (And if you don’t want to see America torn apart by another civil war, that’s probably a good thing, even if you’re existentially frightened by a Trump administration.)

So: that’s part of the backstory for this ol’ SNL video here. The other crucial bit of information you need to know: there’s a movie called Love, Actually that ends (kind of creepily) with a guy trying to steal the brand new wife of his best friend by quietly showing her cue cards relating how he really feels about her. Love, Actually is kind of a Christmas movie so it gets a lot of traction this time every year.

Oh, also, if you didn’t know, Hillary Clinton is the candidate who lost to Trump, who has basically disappeared from the public stage since the election, and who has frequently been played by Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live over the last few years.

Huh, okay, Saturday Night Live is a long-running sketch comedy show that’s aired late on Saturday nights on NBC since 1975. They do lots of political and pop culture parodies and satire and broad character-based comedy and way too many game show and talk show skits. There are also musical guests.

Okay, now that we’ve established all the foundation anyone could possibly need, you should be ready to watch and enjoy (or at least understand) this here comedy sketch.

…did you really just ask what “parody” means?