Last night I sat in front of my computer for hours with a blank page open, trying to think about how I would finally write a presidential endorsement for The Verge. I wanted to be eloquent, sharp, and timeless — to make a poetic stand In Defense Of The Republic. But after a bit of tequila and a lot of writer’s block, I gave up, closed the tab, and went to bed.

Today I saw this video today of Donald Trump getting booed on his way in and out of a voting booth in his home state. It’s better than anything I could have written.

In 1925, Baltimore Sun columnist H.L. Mencken surveyed the debate on evolution made famous in the Scopes trial -- a contest that set rationality and progress against dogma and fear. "On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of," Mencken wrote. "On the other side was sense." I cannot think of a more useful way to describe what we have seen in the campaign of Donald Trump.

Trump’s cynical quest for power will probably end today. He will not stand in the ranks of the dictators he admires. He will be remembered as a sad, small tyrant who rode a wave of Facebook hoaxes and Twitter hate to hijack a party. And for what? To promote his golf courses, hotels, and above all, himself. He will now be the punchline of a joke we tell each other every four years, until the end of our democracy, a long time from now.

Today Donald Trump’s campaign ended the same way his life in New York began: to the sound of ridicule.

So long, Mr. Trump. The haters and losers are winning.

Trump’s success reveals weakness in our democracy