2 weeks Ago
Since winning the presidential election, Republicans have been proclaiming President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral “mandate.” “We are ready to deliver on America’s mandate in the next Congress,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said. But what constitutes a political mandate? “Winning the popular vote provides a mandate,” Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller claimed.
It’s been 20 years since Republicans won the presidential popular vote, so GOP exuberance is understandable. Trump’s winning 31 states resulted in a decisive Electoral College victory, 312 to 226. But with votes still being counted Trump’s share of the electorate has now dipped below 50%.
Trump leads Kamala Harris by 2.44 million votes (1.6%).
In 2020, President Joe Biden beat Trump by over 7 million votes (4.4%). Trump tries to compare his win to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory over President Jimmy Carter.
However, Reagan won in a landslide. He carried 44 states, winning the Electoral College 489 to 49, and the popular vote by 9.7%.
Reagan’s coattails flipped 12 U.S. Senate seats from Democrat to Republican.
This year, four U.S. Senate seats switched from Democrat to Republican.
Trump has nominated a handful of exotically unconventional Cabinet choices and has pressured the U.S. Senate to permit their assuming office without confirmation votes.
The rationale for these nominees is they are much needed “disruptors,” and that Americans voted for radical change to shake things up. For Attorney General, Trump initially chose the completely unqualified Matt Gaetz. The pick was ridiculed from the start with Gaetz withdrawing eight days later.
Gaetz, 42, has no achievements as a lawyer or in Congress and provoked a month of chaos in the House to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. There was also an unreleased House Ethics Committee report investigating Gaetz for allegations he used illicit drugs, paid to have sex with a minor and accepted improper gifts. For Secretary of Defense, Trump nominated culture warrior Pete Hegseth, 44, a Fox News host and military veteran with no management experience.
Hegseth has denounced women in the military. He has railed against “woke” Pentagon leaders on TV, called for firing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. C.
Q. Brown, and intervened in war-crimes cases. Trump’s transition team was blindsided by news that Hegseth had reached a 2020 financial settlement with a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.
Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services has alarmed medical experts who point to his unproven conspiracy theories.
Kennedy, 70, has falsely linked vaccines to autism and called the coronavirus vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” He argues government employees have an interest in “mass poisoning the American public.” Kennedy wants fluoride out of drinking water.
A family babysitter has emerged accusing Kennedy of numerous sexual assaults. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard,43, nominated to be the director of national intelligence, has flipped from far left to far right. She has consistently been a pro-Russian apologist hailed by Russian state media as “our girlfriend.
” She blamed NATO for the Ukraine War, echoing Russian propaganda. Rather than asking whether Trump has a mandate, the better question is what issues got him elected. Inflation was the major issue on which Trump had a mandate.
Trump vowed to bring down inflation. Consumer prices during Biden’s term have risen 20%, compared with 8% in Trump’s term. On Election Day, 40% of voters said the economy was their top issue.
Those voters backed Trump by a 22% margin. The other major issue on which Trump had a mandate was immigration. More than 8 million unauthorized migrants turned up at the southwest border with Mexico during the Biden administration, compared with 2.
1 million during the Trump administration. It’s an issue where Trump won by 16%. Republicans make a grave mistake if they don’t focus on issues that elected Trump.
E-mail Jim Hartman at [email protected]..
