I don't think people on the left like this take on things. They face cognitive dissonance when they hold to their Democratic Fundamentalism and have to face reality that Trump won. Trump's failure to receive the popular vote gave them the perfect opportunity to square those two ideas.
The problem is that elections are sports, and campaigns change depending on the goal of the sport. If the goal is, "get as many electoral votes as possible," the campaign will be different from if the goal were, "get as many popular votes as possible." It's quite likely that we would still be stuck with Trump even if the election were based on popular votes.
