Stop Saying "Mandate!"

I said this back in 2004 when George W. Bush won reelection (and I wish I'd had a blog back then so I could cite it):

51% is not a mandate!

Like in 2004, Republicans won consistently, but by the skin of their teeth. Ohio, not Pennsylvania, was the all-important swing state back then, and Bush took it by a narrow margin - narrow enough that John Kerry didn't concede until a few days after the election, when it finally became clear that Bush's narrow margin wasn't going to shrink appreciably.

Back then, just like now, Republican advocates on all the talking-heads shows were saying "mandate!" "mandate!" as if they'd somehow won by a huge margin.

Except they didn't. They squeaked by. They just did so homogenously.

The most recent example of someone who actually had a mandate is Barack Obama in 2008. He won many states no Democrat had in decades, and was handed commanding majorities in both the House and Senate. But on balance, despite the huge Electoral College margin and Congressional margin, Obama only had 53% of the vote in 2008. He couldn't truthfully claim a mandate, though some did.

Ronald Reagan certainly had a mandate in 1984. When he defeated Walter Mondale, he won most U.S. states and had nearly 59% of the popular vote, with 97.6% of the Electoral College.

Now THAT, my friends, is what a mandate truly looks like. Nowhere near, and nothing like, what Trump eeked by on.

Richard Nixon had a mandate in 1972, with 60% of the popular vote and 96.7% of the Electoral College.

Are you paying attention, class?

But not long before, the Democrats were handed a mandate in 1964 as Lyndon Johnson won 61.1% of the popular vote, and 96.7% of the Electoral College. Dwight Eisenhower had a mandate in 1956 with 57.4% of the popular vote. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a mandate in 1936 when he won 60.8% of the vote.

As of this writing, Donald Trump only won 49.98% of the vote. Not even cracking 50%! Kamala Harris got 48.4% of the vote. The rest voted for someone else.

So don't give me this "mandate" bullshit! More than half of all voters chose someone else! If the American people wanted to give Trump a mandate, he would have gotten at least 55% or higher.

Eric

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