Same As It Ever Was: Trump's Incredible Shrinking Mandate

 

<"Mandate, My Ass!"/The Reckoner>

Of all the words so carelessly bandied about on Election Night 2024, the M-word -- as in, Mandate -- topped the list. Breathless as always, the talking heads rushed to skip ahead of their skis, and give one Donald J. Trump his coveted Golden Mandate Trophy, crown him Emperor, and essentially bend their knee to the poor man's king (as they see him). Or, as a near-hysterical Van Jones howled, in a widely-quoted headline on CNN: "We Were The Idiots."

I agree, though not for the reasons that he surmises, as we'll elaborate on, momentarily. But for a fair hint, you can take the nostalgia tour of what we said in 2016:

https://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2016/11/mandate-shmandate-president-shmesident.html

"Saturday Night Live," now well and truly ossified as it knocks on Season 50, pretended to mock Trump, even as its corporate masters secretly hoped they'll get the "heullva tax cat" that he so brazenly promised them on the campaign trail. In short, business as usual, leaving that classic Talking Heads refrain from "Once In A Lifetime" to mock us:

"Same as it ever was, 

Same as it was ever was...

Same...as it...

e-e-e-e-v-v-errr was!" 

Hang on a minute, though. Reality always serves up a more complex picture, and this election cycle is no exception. Because, guess what? Trump, in a repeat of his 2016 electoral performance, has slowly fallen back to Earth.

And, while it means that Harris remains the bridesmaid, not the bride, these incoming figures should give pause to those who celebrate a Trump restoration as some kind of widely-desired event:

With 152.7 million votes now counted, Trump's overall share of the popular vote has fallen below 50%, according to the Cook Political Report. He now leads Harris by a far smaller margin, with 76,371,044 million votes (49.99%), versus 73,667,048 million for Harris (48.22%). A decisive margin, yes, but hardly the epic wipeout it seemed last week. Or, for that matter, in 2016. (Reckoner's Note. 12/9/24: Harris finished with 74.9 million votes, or 48.4%, to 77.2 million votes for Trump, or 49.9%. A clear enough margin, for sure, but far short of an epic face plant.)

What's more, Trump's overall victory margin (popular vote and Electoral College) is the third smallest, since 1888, as Richard Stengel, former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs noted in his Twitter feed. (Sorry, Herr Musk, as far as I'm concerned, the letter X belongs to the classic LA punk band. Not you!)

"(Only JFK in '60 and Nixon in '68 were smaller). If 238K votes in the blue wall states had been different, he would have lost," Stengel pointed out. "Not a mandate."

Trump will become the second Republican Presidential candidate since George W. Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote, though his margin will only rank among the 44th best, out of 51 elections, since 1824. However, Trump will re-enter the White House with a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, 221-214, which leaves him little margin for error.

Republicans hold a stronger hand in the U.S. Senate (53-47), but it's mainly due to an electoral map that forced Democrats to defend so many more seats during this election cycle (19, versus 11 for Republicans, and four independents). Embattled Democrats won four battleground states (AZ, MI, NV, WI) that Trump carried this time around, leaving his cheerleaders with "some 'splainin' to do," as Ricky used to tell Lucy. Not that they will try, mind you, but the thought is nice.

In fact, the Republicans' path to undoing the Democrats' 51-49 paper majority largely came through two solidly red states (OH, WV), whereas Kari Lake's second straight faceplant in Arizona typifies their recent Senate track record. It's even less impressive, when we consider Pennsylvania, where 65,000 voters lit their ballots on fire for the Green Party candidate.

That's almost twice the margin separating Bob Casey from the likely winner, David McCormick, but no matter. Democrats will have to stop being so gentle to their spoilers. Still, the result underscores another trend that characterized this election cycle -- self-sabotage.

What do we mean, exactly? Well, this has definitely been a remarkable election, but not in the most positive, best elevated sense of the word.

We have seen Arab Americans in Dearborn restore the very man whom they view as unsympathetic to their cause -- 42,000 dead in Gaza, and counting. Unfortunately, while they succeeded in punishing the Democrats, elevating Netanyahu's fan bro buddy takes their cause off the table till 2028. The moral of the story? Voting backward doesn't move you forward.

We have seen Latinos break big time for the very man obsessed with rooting them willy nilly out of the country, who pledges the largest mass deportation in our history. The moral of the story? If you're not at the table, you're on the menu, so why put yourself there willingly?

And, despite the Democratic nominee's singular emphasis of reproductive rights, in general -- and abortion rights, in particular -- we have seen suburban women also break, generally speaking, for the very man who brags about taking them away. The moral of the story? All the vague reassurances from a self-styled authoritarian father figure won't save you from his unhinged whims.

I honestly don't blame people for feeling discouraged right now. Or, as my sister -- who spent every moment of her spare time canvassing for Kamala Harris, and others like her -- put it, "Every time we take two steps forward, we seem to take one step back."

But we also agree, there's no sense in dwelling on those sentiments. All we can do is learn whatever lessons present themselves, and try to forge ahead. Pick a period in our history, any period, and what follows the latest advancement? A furious backlash, driven by those who don't accept it, and resent the notion of coming to terms with it.

Like it or not, the forces behind this pugilistic state of permanent aggrievement aren't going away, and aren't willingly going to hand back whatever power they grub away for themselves. All we can do is hope that we're strong enough to seize the moment, whenever or however it presents itself, and above all else, equal to the task. We expect no more, and we demand no less. --The Reckoner


Links To Go:
The David M. Katz Poetry Blog: "Mandate, My Ass":
https://davidmkatzpoet.com/blog/mandate-my-ass

WhoSampled: 
https://www.whosampled.com/sample/178978/Le-Dust-Sucker-Mandate-My-Ass-Gil-Scott-Heron-B-Movie/

[Where to find Gil Scott-Heron's brilliant takedown of Reagan's electoral win, that wound up being sampled in Le Dust Sucker's 2004 sendup of George W. Bush's victory -- what's the saying here? "Everything is old, is new again?" Or, "The more things change..."? Or, "History doesn't repeat, it rhymes?" Take your pick.]

Yahoo News: Popular Vote Totals
Make Trump's Mandate Looks Like  A Mirage:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/maddow-blog-popular-vote-totals-130359790.html

(Reckoner's Note: Included, for the record. I stopped watching MSNBC in 2024, after seeing their complicity in the shanking of the Bernie movement, an impression not helped by Mira and Joe's sickening display of "obedience in advance," along with their pilgrimage, on bent knee, to Mar-A-Lago. I don't think Musk should be allowed to buy it, so however progressives can block it is fine with us. However, it's another reminder, as if we needed it, of the need to wrest control from a legacy media largely owned and co-opted by monied interests.]

Mandate, Shmandate (President, Shmesident): Why Hillary Clinton Lost

<http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/election-date-polls-odds-ahead-9061964>

<i.>

The bats are streaming out of the abyss, the dark legions are clicking their heels, and fresh smoke still billows over the wreckage...pick whatever expression of purple prose that you prefer to describe the debacle. For Democrats, Election Day 2016 bore an unsettling resemblance to a multi-car pileup of the kind that generates reams of shrieking headlines. 

Few saw it coming. Even as her nine-point peak in the polls continued to evaporate, Hillary Clinton's claque beamed messages of reassurance during the last week: Hey,she's got this. We've been down this road before, it always tightens this late in the game. She's been picked apart for 20-plus years, what more can they dig up? Who'd give Donald Trump the nuclear codes, anyway? 

Once more, however, Democrats found new ways to crash and burn. Although nobody saw the House of Representatives falling -- thanks to the preponderance of Republican-driven statehouses, whose fingers firmly controlled redistricting -- Democratic predictions of retaking the U.S. Senate turned into a washout. Only two Republican incumbents (Mark Kirk, IL; Kelly Ayotte, NH) failed to cross the finish line, and nobody rated their chances too highly, anyway. However, 22 GOP incumbents are returning next year, which is certainly a dismal outcome if you're hoping to gain a majority.

Of course, Clinton's popular tally -- at last count, her margin was 2.8 million votes, and counting -- only makes the disconnect more painful*, since it doesn't change the Electoral College math an iota...and she still joins fellow also-rans Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Adlai Stevenson, and Walter Mondale in the Presidential Losers Club. So what went wrong? Well, in the spirit of our 2012 post ("Why Mitt Romney Lost: Now Let The Circular Fingerpointing Begin"), we offer 10 reasons. As in Mitt's case, pick the one that best suits your mood.

<Once more...with feeling, 'cause you won't see this image again...>

<ii.>

1. Big Data Doesn't Vote (People Do). As soon as the starting gun fired last fall, pundits assumed that Clinton's celebrated organizational machine would raise Obama's demographic detail mining to whole new levels: Alas, "demography was not the destiny Clinton hoped it would be, because the nation is also angrier and more fearful, in part because of dislocations and disappointments caused by the economic globalization that she and her husband have long embraced. Trump's protectionist promise that he can bring back lost working-class jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania may have been false on its face, but that barely mattered." ("What Was Hillary Clinton's Real Downfall? Complacency," politico. com, 11/10/16)

2. Dynasty Fatigue, Anyone?: There's a reason why voters sent Clinton's evil twin, Jeb Bush, so early to the showers after blowing through $150 million.without winning a single primary. However, not everyone got the memo, even after 30 years of a political landscape dominated by Bushes and Clintons: "Yes, it's easy to conclude that the broad disdain the public expresses toward dynasties is a major hurdle for both Jeb and Hillary. But, to my mind, people saying that political dynasties aren't a good thing for the country is kind of like people saying they think there's too much money in politics. Sure. But is it something that impacts actual votes? In both cases I would say no."("People Say They Are Tired Of The Bushes And The Clintons. They're Not, Really": The Washington Post, 3/30/15). 

3. Even Rocky Didn't Take His Victory Lap Over Apollo Creed This Early: Until the FBI's infamous email landmine blew up in late October, gurus from Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight), to the Princeton Election Consortium, never put Clinton's chances below 70 percent: "If the election were held this week, the project estimates that Clinton's odds of securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency at more than 95 percent, and by a margin of Electoral College votes. It is the second week in a row that the project has estimated her odds so high. The results mirror other Electoral College projections, some of which estimate Clinton's chance of winning at around 90 percent."  ("Hillary Clinton On Track For Electoral College Landslide: Poll," Newsweek, 10/15/16)

4. It's The Rationale, Stupid: "When I asked a long-serving Clinton aide this week if there was anything she could have done to keep from losing, he replied without missing a beat: 'Sure: give people a reason to vote for her.'"  ("In Memoriam: The Fall Of The House Of Clinton," Vanity Fair, 11/11/16)

5.. Learning To Love That Slow Drip: "There's a good chance that FBI Director James Comey's vague letter about emails to congressional Republicans, which led to an extremely ill-timed media firestorm, tipped the election to Trump. But then again, she might have avoided the whole story by following the dang rules in the first place.

"I always assumed that if Clinton were nominated for president, the race would be dominated by some weird quasi-scandal that dragged on for month after month. It's not fair, but it is simply the reality of the Clintons. At some point, one simply has to take that into account." ("Why Clinton Lost," The Week, 11/16/16)

6. Maybe It Was Something In The Water, After All: Clinton's plaintive summary of her  fortunes ("Why aren't I ahead by 50 points?") this spring ranks with George W. Bush's battle cry of "Mission accomplished!" in the Premature Pronouncements Hall Of Fame: "She may be a skilled policymaker, but on the campaign trail she makes constant missteps and never realizes things have gone wrong until it's too late. 

"Everyone knows this. Even among Democratic party operatives, she's acknowledged as 'awkward and uninspiring on the stump,' carrying 'Bill's baggage with none of Bill's warmth.'  New York magazine described her 'failing to demonstrate the most elementary political skills, much less those learned at Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie." ("Unless The Democrats Run Sanders, A Trump Nomination Means A Trump Presidency": Current Affairs, 2/23/16)

7. Slow But Steady (Sends Voters Right To Sleep): As early as May, there were ample warning signs that Clinton's creaky, cautious style wasn't convincing voters that she had anything new to offer, especially when it came to their shrinking wallets, as Democratic pollster Celinda Lake discovered:: "We're never going to win those white blue-collar voters if we're not better on the economy. And 27 policy papers and a list of positions is not a frame. We can laugh about it all we want, but Trump had one. It's something that we absolutely have to fix."  ("What Was Hillary Clinton's Real Downfall? Complacency," politico. com, 11/10/16)

8. Such A Tricky Business, This Vision Thing: From the start of her campaign, Clinton's allies and critics alike wondered when (or if) she'd ever get around to explaining just why she wanted the job so badly, an omission that provided no lack of satirical fodder: "Seriously, don't you dare even think about it. If you shitheads can just get in line, we can breeze through this whole campaign in 19 months and be done with it. Or, if you really want, we can do this the hard way. Because make no mistake, I'm not fucking around. Got it?" (Hillary Clinton To Nation: "America, Do Not Fuck This Up For Me," The Onion, 4/12/15)

9. The Glass Ceiling Didn't Even Wobble: For the briefest of times, nothing seemed impossible amid the rosy glow of Clinton's nomination as the first woman to top a national ticket: "At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, just three miles from Independence Hall where the nation was born, a sense of history is palpable -- as is Clinton's willingness to finally enjoy it.

"'What an incredible honor that you have given me, and I can't believe we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet,'" Clinton said via satellite after a video montage showed the faces of all 44 male presidents before shattering like glass to reveal Clinton waiting to address the convention from New York." ("CNN: Clinton Nomination Puts 

'Biggest Crack' In Glass Ceiling," CNN, 7/27/16)

10. The Revolution (Won't Even Get To Bubble Under). Historians will have plenty of fun debating how avidly the Democratic Party establishment chose to clear the decks for Clinton, despite her many flaws. (For my money, it bears all the hallmarks of the music business's response to the rise of punk and New Wave: "Push Disco! Push Top 40! Anything but that crap!"):

 "There are two different worlds. So the question is: What happens when that 18,000 marches into that room... ? Will they be welcomed? Will the door be open? Will the party hierarchy say, 'Thank you for coming in. We need your energy. We need your idealism. C'mon in!'? Or will they say, 'Hey, we've got a pretty good thing going right now. We don't need you. We don't want you'? That's the challenge that the Democratic Party faces. And I don't know what the answer is." (Bernie Sanders, on the ticklish issues that his spirited primary campaign raised, on the eve of the Democratic Convention)

The answer rang loud and clear on Election Day. Time will tell how well the Democratic Party Establishment read the memo -- or if they acknowledge it at all. But I don't see why we should hold our breath. It's time to slam the door shut, once and for all, on a) The Clinton dynasty, b) the neoliberal branding that her particular wing represented, and c) the umpteenth second chance for the Democratic National Committee to get things right. Given how bad our current situation seems likely to get, we can't afford to wait for a different world any longer. --The Reckoner

*That being said, reminding Trump and his acolytes of that number serves one politically useful purpose: it means, once the third party votes are also taken into consideration, that more than half the country voted against him, doesn't support him, and doesn't intend to give him the benefit of any of their doubts. Enough said on that one.

Links To Go (Don't Forget To Wave Away

The Smoke Drifting Over The Wreckage):

CNN: Clinton Nomination Puts 

'Biggest Crack' In Glass Ceiling:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/politics/democratic-convention-roll-call-day-two/

Current Affairs: Unless The Democrats Run Sanders,

A Trump Nomination Means A Trump Presidency:

http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-means-a-trump-presidency

Newsweek: Hillary Clinton On Track

For Electoral College Landslide: Poll

http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-track-electoral-college-landslide-510362

Politico.com: What Was Hillary Clinton's Real Downfall? Complacency

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-loses-2016-complacency-214445

The Hill: Clinton Allies Panic Over Message:

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/268887-clinton-allies-panic-over-message

The New York Times: How Data Failed Us In Calling An Election

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/the-data-said-clinton-would-win-why-you-shouldnt-have-believed-it.html

The Onion: Hillary Clinton To Nation: 

"Do Not Fuck This Up For Me"

:http://www.theonion.com/article/hillary-clinton-to-nation-do-not-fuck-this-up-for--38416

Vanity Fair: In Memoriam:

The Fall Of The House Of Clinton

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/the-fall-of-the-house-of-clinton

This Just In: Mitt Romney Needed The 47 Percent, After All

Poetic Justice Dept.: Honestly, you couldn't make up this kind of stuff, if you tried...now that the dust has long settled on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential defeat, we're being inundated with The Irony To End All Ironies: contrary to what he told his fundraisers earlier in the proceedings, the Mittmeister will end up with...47 percent of the popular vote.

As of last Friday, according to Yahoo News, Romney netted 60,221,746 votes, versus 64,430,488 for President Obama. Expressed in percentage terms, those totals amount to 50.8 percent for Obama, and 47.5 percent for Romney, respectively, though once the numbers from Democratic strongholds like California and New York are figured into the equation, Romney's final tally is likely to end up at...47 percent.

Presidential post-mortems are heavy on self-justification and spin; after all, that's how most of the consultants, pollsters and other characters of nebulous job descriptions make their money while a campaign is hot...and, conversely, seek to cover their rear ends when their predictions go south.

We've already covered this subject in our last post ("Why Mitt Romney Lost: Now Let The Circular Fingerpointing Begin"), so there's no need to retread that ground anew, but it's worth reflecting on these various spins can be rolled out.  On one hand, Mitt Romney fared marginally better than his last rival, John McCain, who garnered 59,948,323 votes during his 2008 losing campaign. That's a 273,423-vote uptick -- small, but enough to say, "Well, I guess I did better than that dude, at least...whew."

On the other hand, as the old sports cliche goes, the game wasn't quite as close as the score would indicate. Obama bested his Massachusetts rival by about 4.2 million votes -- hardly the stuff of a landslide, to be sure, but in the grand scheme of things...a clear-cut enough verdict of some kind.

Romney failed to win any of the so-called "battleground" states -- including Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia and Ohio, where Obama led throughout the year...and the GOP standard-bearer singlarly failed to get off the ground. The Electoral College count fell to Obama, 332-206 -- again, not a blowout, but not exactly a cliffhanger, either, unless you're comparing the 2008 result (which swung Obama's way, 365-173).

Even as the last votes are counted, and the last chips are left to fall, it's fascinating to see how many people -- particularly those on the far-right side of the coin -- continue denying what's in front of them.  We've been hearing these voices making the political talk show rounds -- you know, those Sunday morning mausoleums where failed consultants, failed pundits and failed politicians who haven't pulled down a real job in eons can reach the opposite verdict from the one that the voters rendered.

If you haven't heard the various clarion calls for a kinder, gentler GOP, chances are that you've heard the dominant riff: "We need a better ground game, do a better job of getting our troops out, that's all."  In truth, however, the best ground game in the world couldn't have helped Mitt Romney, particularly after his infamous video dismissal of the 47 percent -- you know, the ones he heaped contempt on, saying that they'd never vote for him, anyway, because they liked being dependent on government -- became public fodder.

Perhaps the simplest takeaway from the whole business is that, if you run a toxic candidate -- or an inept candidate, or a bad candidate, of which Uncle Mitt was all of the above, and then some -- your chances of winning any office, from County Dog Catcher, to President -- are virtually nil.  That may be an inconvenient truth for proponents of voter suppression theories, and similar airy-fairy-grams, but certainly closer to reality. In our opinion, this comment from Newsweek ("From Mitt To Moot: Mitt Romney's Quick, Quiet Fade") offers the best epitaph for Romney's 2012 campaign:

"All along, with the brief exception of the first debate, the GOP candidate seemed to hesitate and waffle.  He changed his positions so often, we had trouble knowing who the man who was -- even when he was right in front of us, there was a curious emptiness to his image.  Now he's gone, leaving behind the modest totems of hair pomade and the number 47."

That's as good as an epitaph as any, we suspect. -- The Reckoner