“Talent”, as in all those writers, news show hosts and their pundit guests got their marching orders right after the election. Like the good little gutless, greedy cowards almost all of them are they’ve been proclaiming a “Trump Mandate.” That’s what the owners and executives at news outlets DEMANDED and by god they are going to DEMAND we accept their “expertise” on the matter. The thing is, some of us including a handful of brave souls in the journalistic ranks took a look at the numbers. And the map. And we thought to ourselves “Mandate? Really? It’s not going to turn out that way.” Two weeks after the election the ‘four, maybe even (breathless with excitement) five percent Trump popular vote margin is turning out to be less. A LOT less.
I wrote last week about all the votes yet to be counted, and in particular not just the west coast but California. I said that come sometime in December when California was done (or virtually so) Trump would be lucky to have a 2.5% margin and 2% was more likely. Perhaps even less. (Why California hasn’t fixed the issue with taking so long is an entirely different subject. The point is we’ve got lots of experience knowing pretty much how things will play out) Well, when I checked yesterday evening Trump’s margin over Harris in the popular vote was down to 1.7%! And that talk about him getting a majority (over fifty percent) of the vote was pretty much gone too. The current tally had him sitting at 50% and like I say, that was bound to drop.
Less than a day later guess what? As outlets are (reluctantly) reporting and as shown in this piece from The Nation (hardly a bastion of liberal thinking) Trump has fallen below 50% and will surely see his margin slide a bit more. With Harris he’s still at “1.7” but a quick calculation on my part show it’s actually 1.68%. I’m not sure he’ll slide all the way down to 1.5% but he’s going to be well short of even two freaking percent! Mandate my ass! Let’s take a look at what’s in the linked article:
Let’s put this in perspective in perspective: Trump is winning a lower percent of the popular vote this year than Biden did in 2020 (51.3), Obama in 2012 (51.1), Obama in 2008 (52.9), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (53.2), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8), Reagan in 1980 (50.7), or Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.1). And, of course, Trump numbers are way below the presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “unprecedented and powerful” mandates, such as Richard Nixon’s 60.7 percent in 1972, Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1 percent in 1964, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 60.8 percent. As Trump’s percentage continues to slide, he’ll fall below the thresholds achieved by most presidents in the past century.
On the other hand the author notes Harris’ performance is looking stronger by the day. He notes all those (including Trump in 2016 and 2020) she will have outperformed. Quite a long list in fact. I’m not saying Trump didn’t win. I AM saying that just as he squeaked by in 2016 he’s done so again. Don’t tolerate ANYONE claiming some kind of “Mandate.” What’s that you say? The GOP hit the “trifecta” by also holding the House and retaking the Senate? Well, let’s briefly talk about that too. If anyone wants to challenge me I’ll write another article with plenty of details. Given my reputation for being long-winded I’m trying to keep this short and to the point.
We’ve known for two years Democrats faced a tough, really tough Senate map this year. They’d be defending far more seats than the GOP, with many in swing states and even red states. West Virginia was a goner even before Joe Manchin accepted that reality and made it official by retiring. Though popular and effective both Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio were in trouble. Swingy and always razor thin Nevada and Wisconsin made Jackie Rosen and Tammy Baldwin quite vulnerable. Arizona was also a possible pickup at least until Kari Lake emerged from the GOP jungle there. McConnell was looking at 54, maybe even 55 GOP seats. And handing over the reigns of Majority Leader on his terms sometime next year to a hand-picked successor.
Even he realized that wasn’t going to happen. He was correct in assuming the GOP would regain the majority but it was nowhere near the cakewalk he’d thought it would be and between the fight to get quality candidates and the budget stuff he just ran out of gas. With Casey’s apparent narrow loss in Pennsylvania (unexpected I think even by the GOP) it looks like Republicans will have 53 seats. However that’s literally a matter of geography and the allocation in the Constitution of only two Senators per state regardless of population. During the founder’s time we were an agrarian country with few major cities and states were more evenly populated. Over time the matter of how many Senators each state gets was never addressed. As a result you can band together entire groups of red states that still don’t have the population of our four most populous states. If there was a more equitable system California and New York would wind up giving us a bit more Senators than Texas and Florida and we’d have a Democratic Senate.
Over in the House, well you know what happened in 2022. The GOP’s margin was about the slimmest in history. It will be even slimmer this time! If not for (mostly in red states) gerrymandering we’d narrowly control the House. But they are BARELY in the majority. And 2026 is sitting out there, just as 2018 was for Republicans who were to eager to support Trump or too afraid to oppose him.
I look at all this ‘from altitude’ and think the “Mandate” being claimed by Trump and the GOP is a repeat of 2022. Remember the “Red Wave” that was going to sweep away Democrats? It was at best a Red TRICKLE. Ok, we have to admit that with Trump going back into the WH things are going to be tougher. Still, I’m going to keep harping on this. Trump BARELY won. The GOP Barely won the House and wouldn’t have done so without serious, and in some states (like my own North Carolina) vicious gerrymandering. And while the Senate has a little GOP breathing room I’ve already explained why that’s not in any way a legitimate “Mandate.”
If like me you’re luck enough to have a Democrat representing you in either chamber of Congress remind them of that. Regularly. I have a Democrat representing me in the House, one of few in my state who can say that. I’ve got two P.O.S. Republican Senators. I can assure you when I contact their offices (and I frequently do) I’ll remind THEM that they don’t have any f**king mandate. And that going along with what Trump plans to do is going to cost their Party come 2026 the same way it did in 2022 and perhaps even closer to 2018!
I know it’s hard. But keep the faith. Push back and push back hard with friends, family, co-workers and on social media when Trump and the GOP and freaking journalists claim he’s got a Mandate. He doesn’t. His lead shrinks every day. And believe me when I say it will kill Trump to not being able to claim that THIS time he got a majority of the votes. Oh, he’ll try to claim it but there ARE a few brave journalists that will push back and hit him with actual numbers. The Trumpian explosions when that happens will be epic.
and you’re one of those brave journalists, so thanks!
Well, thank you. I’ve said before if the MAGAs come for me this ole jarhead intends to go to hell in a crowd. Over in Chapel Hill Scott Sammuel Jackson will be the same. I’m sure we’re far from the only ones.
Now, can you just tell Jason, the rest of us here commenting have taken him to task on this matter a few times. 🙂
I can’t say I always agree with Jason, or his take on things BUT he makes me think. That I truly believe is a GOOD thing. Yes, those of us who peruse this or any site regularly tend to have fairly strong, mutually held views on many issues. Nothing wrong with that and it’s always comforting to see there are lots of like-minded people. At the same time one issue many of us have with the other side is their “echo chamber” and unwillingness to consider if not differing views, at least a “hang on – there’s another way to look at this” or “we should consider this from a different perspective.”
I sometimes find Jason, like other people I know force me to re-examine my views. I don’t often change them, but I for one think being challenged a bit sometimes is as I said a good thing. Circumstances change. New information comes out. And if we’ve lulled ourselves into “this is how it is and always will/should be” frame of mind we find ourselves missing important things.
That’s actually what some are saying happened to Democrats in this last election. Personally I’m appalled at the high profile people doing the “This is how/why Harris BLEW it” crap they are spewing. There will be plenty of time next year to engage in THOUGHTFUL analysis and introspection as well as discussion on how to shape messaging. We had good programs that most of the country including those who voted against us agree with. However our messaging didn’t break through. Or our priorities were off. Or we made incorrect assumptions etc. but the plain fact is our side didn’t get the job done despite how hard so many of us tried.
At the moment our priority has to be picking ourselves up and throwing back enough “punches” to keep Team Trump from getting on a roll. At the same time he conned half the voters into picking him and we can’t ignore that. Or assume it doesn’t matter why and that when his policies make life way worse for them next year they will come flocking back to us. We are going to have to figure out why they did NOT listen to us this time!
To do that we have to consider things we might not want to dig into.
“However our messaging didn’t break through.”
The nub of the issue.
There are things called truths and things called facts, that are both, real and provable. And there are interpretations, narratives and ‘perspectives’ of these.
Lately, it would seem to me, and others too, that far too much is put onto these latter things and far too little on the first. If it is reported that Mr Trump had a ‘landslide victory’ or a ‘sweeping mandate’ it should be because he did. If he didn’t have a ‘landslide victory’ or a ‘sweeping mandate’ it shouldn’t be reported that he did for it is a lie. Where facts and the truth are concerned they either are or aren’t, there are no ‘alternative facts’.
We should be able to trust that Politizoom reports facts as facts, truth as truth, and interpretations, narratives and ‘perspectives as such. It’s an unfortunate apparent truth now that because enough people believed ‘narratives, ‘perspectives’, and ‘interpretations’ fed to them by dishonest media were actually the truth and facts, that we now have the government we do. Please don’t support their lies and propaganda that they have wide, overwhelming majority support for their toxic policies when they don’t. We need to have our resistance against a reality rather than a shibboleth.
“We are going to have to figure out why they did NOT listen to us this time! ”
The Democrats have been the victims of increasingly sophisticated Republican PROPAGANDA techniques. I use that old-fashioned word deliberately. There used to be this thing called propaganda studies. It was very widely studied during WW2 and the Cold War. Since then it seems to have gone into oblivion. This is very unfortunate, because with the advent of digital social media and AI Propaganda gotten way more sophisticated. Not so much the techniques of propaganda themselves, but the firehouse effect made possible by modern technology. During the 2024 campaign American intelligence was well aware of many fake websites emanating from Russia, China, and other countries, and we even shut quite a few of them down. But it’s like whack a mole. Mainstream media and blogs lap the stuff up, even pro-democracy blogs are influenced by it without even realizing it.
Meanwhile the Democratic party and the pollsters seem hardly aware of it. They bring a peashooter, or at best a knife, to the gunfight. We desperately need to revive the study of propaganda so we counter the crap they have been spewing.. Yes, we hear a lot about disinformation, but that is not the same thing as propaganda. Propaganda can (and these days certainly does) make heavy use of disinfo, but it also mixes in truths and half truths which it carefully selects, shapes, and targets at very specific populations. They also know how to get a group to listen not by facts but by how they look and how they talk (like a “regular guy” —it’s called “ethos” in classical rhetoric) and how to arouse the right emotions (that’s called “pathos”). They are totally clued in to the particular audience. They will telll one group one thing and another group the exact opposite. Meanwhile, Dems and their supporters spend a lot of time and energy pointing out the contradictions. Hint: That’s not the point! The contradictions are a feature, not a bug. The point is they know how to get any group riled up against whoever they want them to hate and in favor of whoever they want them to like.
Democrats don’t need to use disinformation, but we do need propaganda, in other words, effective communication techniques to counter the Republicans. Only then can our real strengths emerge. Sure, Biden did great things, but none of these bozos knew it. EVen though they were experiencing it and benefiting by it. How could that be? It’s NOT because they’re all idiots. (A lot of them are, but if it was only them, Trump wouldn’t have had enough votes.) It’s because they were being barraged with malicious propaganda from media sources (like christofascist radio, social media) that are barely on our radar screen — that know how to cancel out reality. “making the worse appear the better cause.”
One guy that gets this is The Contentious Otter. Check out his book “The Perpetual Hamster Wheel of Stupidity: An analysis of the Republican Party’s use of the tactics of proselytizing mass movements to mobilize and radicalize the Trump base.”
Facts and good logical arguments, are the creme de la creme, (known as “logos”) but by themselves have NO IMPACT. What could be more evident proof of how this election turned out? Even the much-admired Lincoln Project has no impact on these guys — why? Because their stuff, while technically excellent, is NOT directed at people who are vulnerable to Trumpian BS, it’s directed at keeping up the morale of people who already know Trump is a disaster.
Meanwhile the
Oops, I meant “firehouse” not “firehouse.” “evident proof of how” should read “evident proof than how” And “meanwhile the” at the end is just some fragment that I should have deleted. Apologies.
“firehose” damn it.
YES … gotta love the HEADER… I remember that evening very well. I believe Prince George may even still, as I am sure there are family pics he has seen.