Does Trump have a mandate?

[stevenkesslar]

Does Trump have a mandate?   It's kind of a stupid question.  Because a mandate is in the eyes of the beholder.

The more interesting crystal ball question to me is this:  now that Trump has won, can he consolidate the win into a coalition that holds for more than one election?  We know he failed to do that in 2016.

What I find most interesting is that when Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020, with 51.3 % of the popular vote, Republicans said it was a stolen election.  Trump will win by something like 49.8 % of the popular vote, and something like a 2.5 million vote margin, when the last votes in California are counted.  On the electoral college side, it is a repeat of both 2016 and 2020.  Change 200,000 votes or so in the blue wall states and it changes who the winner is.

So my answer, until further notice, is that the Republican Party is just deeply unprincipled.  Politicians lie and flip flop every day of the week.  Voters expect it.  But when they say Biden stole the 2020 election, and they have a Jubilant Patriotic Cop Beating and try to steal the election themselves, that just doesn't get swept under the rug.  Even if Trump just won the popular vote, narrowly, thanks to inflation.  These are deeply unprincipled people.  And I don't believe a word they say about their mandate.

This way of thinking actually connects very will with what VOTERS seem to have said, in terms of a Trump mandate.

In a new Harris poll by Mark Penn, who was very close to correctly predicting the vote outcome, 68 % of all voters said their biggest hope for Trump 2.0 is "end inflation and price increases."   Whatever mandate Trump won is focused on working class affordability.  If Trump does his tariff thing, which I doubt he will, it will raise prices on Americans.  If he deports every low paid farm worker, the same.  Oops!   Of course, Matt Gaetz is looking for a job now.  Picking cherries, Matt? 😨

Most Democrats, and half of Independents, said in the latest Harris poll that their worst fear is that Trump acts like a dictator.  I take that as confirming that the message got through loud and clear, and is still felt by many voters in the middle.  Including many who voted for Trump, because of the economy, stupid.

One other little hint in the Harris poll is that 53 % of all voters, and 55 % of Independents, want Trump's trials to continue.  So you can argue that voters did give Trump a mandate to be tried by a jury of his peers, as POTUS.  It won't happen, of course.  I suspect this may help explain why Gaetz imploded.  Senate Republicans can read polls, and know there is no mandate for lawlessness.   Or sex with children.   So if we are very lucky they nipped that idea of a mandate in the bud.

Pod Save America: The Biden campaign had internal polling showing that Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes at the same time that they were insisting he was a strong candidate.

This is the part I am most interested to learn more about, when the books are written.  Because there are lots of reasons to believe that Trump may have been on his way to a much more significant electoral blowout.  Many Democrats and Republicans were saying this in the Summer, around when Trump was coronated at the RNC.  What did Biden know?  What did Pelosi do?  Is it true, as I have read repeatedly, that Obama wanted Mark Kelly to be the nominee?  How could that ever have happened, legitimately, without a Democratic primary?

I do think the history books are going to blame this more on Biden, and his ego, then on Harris, and her politics of joy and caution.  The thing that might have worked better is if Biden had not run, and Harris fought her way through a Democratic primary.  Or if they had been selfless, and choreographed a show where Harris threw Biden under the bus on immigration, and some other things.  But any idea premised on Biden not having an ego was always going to fail.   And it might have just made Harris look like a disloyal flip flopper.  

The simple explanation I keep coming back to is that Biden and Harris both had a massive wall of lava coming at them.  As did every leader who presided over COVID-era inflation.  So it isn't a shock that neither could outrun it.  But I also buy the idea that if Biden had been on the ballot, it would be a whole lot worse.

The other question I hope lots of strategists write about is:  why did Mexico dodge the bullet, and elect a woman from the left-wing incumbent party in a landslide?  I think the simple answer is Mexican voters felt they had a working class party that fought for the working class, and won for the working class.  In the eyes of the US White working class, Biden and Harris failed to do that.

41 % approval - Bush 41 in 1992 - Incumbent party (Bush 41) loses by - 5.6 %

39 % approval - Biden in 2024 - Incumbent party (Harris) loses by -1.7 %

37 % approval - Carter in 1980 - Incumbent party (Carter) loses by -9.7 %

I posted that whole list of 19 elections since Truman on a different thread.  What is surprising is how incredibly simple this is.  There are 19 races.  In 18 out of 19, the incumbent party won the popular vote if the incumbent President had an approval rating of 50 % or higher.  The one exception was Nixon in 1960, who lost the popular vote by - 0.2 %  The other two caveats are that Gore in 2000 and Clinton in 2016 also won the popular vote, on the tailwinds of an incumbent with over 50 % approval, but also lost the electoral college. 

So Presidents with 50 % approval or higher will always see their party win, with the one big caveat being "the third term curse."   A sitting President with a 50%+ approval rating is a proven ticket to victory, so far. Unless it is a popular President who can't run again.  Then all bets are off.

In all 8 examples where the incumbent President had an approval rating under 50 %, the incumbent party lost.  The highest approval rating of these 8 was Gerald Ford in 1975, with 44 % approval.  So all eight incumbents in these losing elections were well below 50 % approval.  And it is clear that the degree of unpopularity influenced the vote outcome.  Ford lost by -1.9 %.  Stevenson, carrying the baggage of Truman's 30 % approval rating, lost by - 10.9 %

The two candidates who outperformed in relative terms were Humphrey in 1968, and Harris in 2024.   Humphrey lost by -0.7 %, and Harris by -1.7 %.  Of the four incumbents with approval ratings under 40 %, three of four led to wipeouts:   Truman had 30 % approval, and Stevenson in 1952 lost by -10.9 %.  Carter had 37 % approval, and Carter in 1980 lost by -9.7 %.  W. had an epic low approval of 26 %, and McCain lost in 2008 by - 7.2 %.  Biden had 39 % approval, but Harris did way better than the other three, losing by "only" -1.7 %

What the numbers suggest is that incumbency helps.  But only when the incumbent is popular, and only when they are the ballot themselves. Incumbency hurts when they are unpopular.  And in 1968 and 2024 Democrats very likely cut their losses by switching out unpopular incumbents.

I think the two examples on either side of Biden 2024 help answer the question of whether Trump has a mandate.  And how this is likely to play out.

Reagan 1980 had as big a mandate as you can get.  In addition to a crushing national victory, Republicans won 12 Senate seats, 34 House seats, and 4 Governorships.  That all got translated into a legislative agenda that had liberalism and Big Government on the ropes for decades.   

Clinton 1992 was an election quite like 2024, in this sense.  It was the original "it's the economy, stupid" election, thanks to Jim Carville.  Like in 2024, voters took an unpopular incumbent out.  But in 1992 Democrats won no Senate seats.  And Republicans, the losing party, won 9 House seats.   Clinton had a rocky first two years, with lots of big failures, like Hillarycare and Gays In The Military.  Mandate?  Not so much.  The fact that the down ballot results in 1992 actually favored Republicans, slightly, could be taken as a harbinger of the 1994 Republican blowout that was to come.  That said, Clinton licked his wounds and moved to the center and did manage to consolidate his 1992 victory.

This time Democrats lost 4 Senate seats, they will likely gain 1 or 2 House seats (the final two uncalled California races), and they lost no Governor races.  That's much more like 1992 than 1980.  It's bad news that Democrats had no chance to hold 3 Senate seats in red states, as it turned out.  It's good news that Democrats won 4 of 5 Senate seats in swing states that voted for Trump.  It's also good news if Democrats learn lessons from winners like Ruben Gallego, among others.  About how to appeal to the working class by being like them, and promising economic populism.

The scariest news to Democrats is this.  Of the 8 out of 19 Presidential elections since Truman that incumbent parties lost due to unpopular incumbent Presidents, the winning party was able to consolidate their victory in 5 out of those 8 elections:  Eisenhower in 1952, Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992, Obama in 2008.  The two times the winning party failed to consolidate were Carter in 1976, and Biden in 2020.  In both cases, inflation was the big nail in the coffin.  So unless inflation comes roaring back, history does suggest that Republicans, now that they are in power, have a very good chance of consolidating their victory.

That said, we have seen this movie before.  Trump won in 2016 despite the fact that Obama had a 52 % approval rating, and Clinton won the popular vote by a 2.2 % margin.  Given that Biden's approval rating in 2024 was 13 % lower than Obama's in 2016, it certainly makes sense that Trump would do better in 2024 than 2016.  Many Republicans have said that if they had a nominee with fewer liabilities, they really would have won in a landslide.   We'll never know.

The other close example to Trump on a mandate is George W. Bush in 2004.  He claimed a 50.7 % win gave him a mandate.  He did more unpopular things, as his Iraq War became more and more unpopular as well. That "mandate" did not end well.

If I had to bet, I'd bet that Trump will again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and fuck it up.  He really doesn't seem to have a strategy, other than retribution and rage.  Tax cuts for billionaires, tariffs that raise prices at Walmart, and cutting programs that help the working class may be what Elon Musk wants.  But it was not Trump's mandate.

I think Democrats who are popular Governors who want to be President in 2028 - and there are many of them - are smart to sit back and give Trump enough rope to hang himself with his own mandate.

 

 

[reader]

Trump finds himself in the position to solidify his strong man image by orchestrating the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine soon after taking office. It echoes the opportunity that Reagan had when he succeeded Carter and negotiated the quick return of US hostages from Iran. 

Biden’s reluctance early on to give Ukraine tanks and planes at a moment when it could have crippled the Invasion set up this scenario. He hesitated and dithered and slowly but surely Russia gained the momentum. China, Iran and North Korea seized the opportunity to come to Russia’s side, weakening the efforts of the US and its allies over time. 

If there’s a lesson here is you don’t go to war piecemeal. And make no mistake, this is a war of attrition.  America and its allies may not have troops on the ground but their reputations are at stake. Billons spent with nothing to show for it as Russia gets to keep what it has gained. 

Trump is despicable but he understands the use of power and that translates to fear. No one or their dog was afraid of Joe.