Trump’s Mandate

It's neither unprecedented nor powerful. It doesn't exist.

In his early-morning victory speech Wednesday, President-Elect Donald Trump proclaimed, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

WaPo’s Aaron Blake (“Trump’s mandate isn’t as ‘powerful’ as he suggests. Here’s why.“):

While Trump’s win was larger than many expected and every swing state swung in his favor, his level of support is relatively par for the course for a victor. And Republicans on the whole didn’t do as well as he did.

It’s all worth diving into, given the major questions about whether Trump and the GOP will actually pursue some of the extreme proposals he has pitched on the campaign trail — and given that his and his party’s mandate, both perceived and real, will play a role in what lies ahead.

As things stand, Trump probably will sweep the seven swing states, but he will do so with only marginally more electoral votes (probably 312) than he won in 2016 (304) and President Joe Biden won in 2020 (306).

That 312 total would also outpace both of George W. Bush’s elections, but it’s fewer than in any election involving Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. And the 58 percent of electoral votes Trump probably will win would rank 41st all-time.

It’s more impressive given that we are a more polarized country today than we used to be, but it’s hardly out of step with other recent presidential election results.

The other key measure here is the popular vote, which has no bearing on who is actually elected but does say something about their support nationwide.

Trump is currently taking 50.9 percent of the popular vote and leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.3 points. That will shift as the remaining votes are counted, but it seems Trump will actually win the popular vote this time, which he didn’t do when he won the 2016 election.

At the same time, his popular-vote share probably will drop as the remaining (mostly western and largely Californian) votes are counted. It’s likely he’ll win a smaller percentage of the popular vote than any non-Trump president-elect since 2000, when George W. Bush won despite losing the popular vote. A big question is whether he could wind up shy of a popular majority.

Regardless, it’s overstating it to claim an “unprecedented and powerful” mandate when half of the population didn’t vote for you.

The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer (“There Is No Constitutional Mandate for Fascism“) is more adamant:

Trump will claim a popular mandate for everything he does. He did that when he eked out a narrow Electoral College victory in 2016, and he will do it now. But there is no constitutional mandate for authoritarianism. No matter what the Roberts Supreme Court says, the president is not a king, and he is not entitled to ignore the law in order to do whatever he pleases.

Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.

BBC North America correspondent Antony Zurcher (“Result hands Trump free rein“) disagrees.

His victory cements a fundamental realignment of American politics toward a conservative populism that began in 2016 and was thought to have been discarded with his defeat in 2020.

His political movement is back and seemingly more durable than ever.

Trump now will have the opportunity to set about building his new administration and enacting the policies that he has promised will create that new golden age.

Trump will be joined in power by a Senate that is now again in Republican hands after four years of Democratic control. This will ease the path for Trump’s political appointees, including Cabinet officials and judicial picks, who require Senate confirmation.

It will take days, if not weeks, to determine if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. But in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump predicted his party would prevail there as well.

[…]

Trump was at times unfocused and abrasive in his rally speeches, but he surrounded himself with a savvy, professional staff. Surveys indicated that Americans trusted Trump on the top two issues of this election – immigration and the economy – and his campaign relentlessly hammered his message on them.

Being on the right side of the big issues, at a time when the electoral mood in the US – and, for that matter, across may of the world’s democracies – was decidedly anti-incumbent was what mattered most.

Across the map, the former president improved many of his margins from 2020, sometimes dramatically. His campaign successfully turned out rural voters that were intensely loyal to him and ate into Democratic margins in the cities. While exit polls are still being adjusted to reflect the latest results, Trump appears to have made inroads into the traditional Democratic coalitions of young, Hispanic and black voters.

While Trump’s team appeared initially uncertain about how to handle the late switch from Biden to Kamala Harris, the former president ultimately found his footing and rode the wave of anti-incumbent sentiment back to the White House.

Now he has four more years to govern – this time with a more developed political organisation behind him, eager to turn his campaign promises into action.

Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy (“The Trump Mandate“) is more enthusiastic still:

Donald Trump has won a victory even more stunning than his upset defeat of Hillary Clinton eight years ago. Two impeachments, relentless lawfare and innumerable criminal charges, two assassination attempts, and an unceasing chorus of the nation’s most powerful media calling him a “fascist” could not stop Trump. In the teeth of all that adversity, Trump has only grown stronger. And now he has the symbolic yet potent mandate of a popular-vote majority.

That majority adds psychological force that makes the Trump revolution cultural as well as political. Before, it was easy for Trump’s critics to believe his 2016 victory was a fluke. They might have to deal with its consequences, including the impetus his election gave to a populist turn within the institutions of the conservative movement.

[…]

Trump has shattered the laws of political physics. Realignments that had already begun as a result of Trump’s earlier success are accelerating. To appreciate the magnitude of what Trump achieved in this election, look beyond the states he won—in blue state after blue state, Trump made enormous, often double-digit gains. He made deep inroads into the Hispanic vote, particularly among men. Meanwhile, neoconservatives who held out hope of retaking the commanding heights of the Republican party if Trump was defeated have little choice now but to accept a place in the Democratic coalition. But they may not be comfortable there, either, as Democrats crack up over Israel’s war with Hamas.

[…]

The president will be confronted by stiff opposition within the federal bureaucracy as well as from Democrats in Congress. He should not flinch from forcing reform on the administrative state and dismantling entire departments of the federal government. In this, too, Trump can be transformative. His experiences during his first term with leaks and policy sabotage originating from the bureaucracy should inform his handling of the civil service this time. It has been a power unto itself for far too long, and it has pursued not a disinterested agenda in the service of the public but a partisan agenda in the service of liberal elites.

There’s something to all of these arguments, but they boil down to this: There’s no such thing as a mandate. There’s only what you can do.

There’s no such thing as a mandate because, with only two real choices on the ballot, a vote for a given candidate is not an endorsement of all their policy pronouncements. When I was a loyal Republican, I frequently disagreed with the nominee on any number of issues; I simply preferred them, on balance, to the alternative. Because I believed Trump morally and mentally unfit for the presidency, I voted against him in 2016, 2020, and 2024 despite rather severe disagreements with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris on even major planks in their campaign platform. This is true, to varying degrees, for virtually every voter.

Two Presidents in my lifetime, George W. Bush (in 2000) and Trump (in 2016), won office despite getting fewer votes than their opponent. Did that stop them from governing aggressively? It did not. It took losing control of the Senate to do that.

Does a President who wins a landslide have a better chance to enact their agenda? Absolutely. But that’s because they’re likely to have coattails that give them powerful Congressional majorities and, in some cases, even opposition Members will feel pressured to go along with their more popular proposals.

Presuming Trump wins the House, which looks to be a safe bet, he’s poised to have strong backing in Congress. His party has been transformed over the last eight years into one that’s very loyal to him. And he’s got a sympathetic Supreme Court majority.

But Serwer is ultimately right: while Trump has spouted all manner of authoritarian and, indeed, fascistic language on the stump, he lacks the Constitutional and statutory power to enact much of it. Even if, as one presumes they will, the Republican majority in the Senate votes to abolish or at least further weaken the filibuster, many of his ideas are essentially impossible to turn into policy.

Regardless, he has no “mandate.” He merely has four years to convince Congress to pass laws and issue executive orders, hoping they pass judicial scrutiny.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Constitution, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Reminds me of Robert Dahl’s 1990 piece in PSQ.

  2. Scott says:

    Of course Trump doesn’t have a mandate. Neither do Republicans. But that won’t stop them from trying. What the opposition has to do is figure out how to grind things to a halt. And remember that the appropriations process is the key to that.

    2
  3. Also this piece I read the other day by Julia Azari: Be wary of anyone claiming an election mandate.

    2
  4. Michael Reynolds says:

    he lacks the Constitutional and statutory power to enact much of it

    You’re whistling past the graveyard, James. He talks about using the US Army to attack his domestic opponents. And you cannot promise me that he won’t do that, or that the Army would successfully resist.

    MAGA is a mob baying for blood – transgender people, immigrants, the media, academia – and Trump will deliver. Trump is too lazy and stupid to do it himself, but he has smart and evil people working for him. Do you think Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn will just go sit in a corner? Do you imagine for one minute that any Republican in Congress will defy him? Do you think SCOTUS will reverse its blanket protection of presidential power and stand up to him? And even if they did, do you think Trump will GAF?

    He won on a message of hate, rage and resentment. He’s not going to turn into a Republican, he’s a fascist and so is whatever is left of the GOP.

    18
  5. Kathy says:

    [Trump] does have one clear real mandate from voters: lower food prices.

    I estimate he will fail miserably at it.

    7
  6. Jay L Gischer says:

    I disagree strongly with “fundamental realignment”. First, that’s hype about a solid win. Second, the whole thing was about Trump and the ability he has to allow people to project their own dreams onto him, thinking he will fix it.

    Nobody else visible on the field has this ability like Trump does. Vance doesn’t have it, for sure.

    I did not think Harris spoke in “word salad”. At the same time, I don’t think how Trump spoke was all that terrible. It clearly connected with people. Yeah, he ducked questions, and in a way that’s different from the average politician. This made him more appealing, since he didn’t sound like the normal politician, who has made big promises and not delivered.

    Trump is also good at in-office theater – making it look like he’s doing something for voters. I don’t like it, but perception is reality.

    To get back to my point, I need to keep a keen ear for which Democratic candidates speak in a way that my old high-school buddies can connect with. Bill Clinton, for instance, did that.

  7. Scott says:

    @Michael Reynolds: As I wrote yesterday, my Facebook and other social media feeds did not demonstrate celebrations of Trump’s election but rather gloating and revenge.

    5
  8. Mr. Prosser says:

    @Michael Reynolds: He probably can’t get the military for his domestic actions but like Iran it’s handy to have a Revolutionary Guard. I have been thinking of ICE and the Border Patrol as candidates.

    6
  9. Scott says:

    @Scott: Every has heard about the racist and sexist text message sent out yesterday.

    Racist texts about slaves and ‘picking cotton’ sent to Black people as state AGs, colleges and police probe their origins.

    Some are attributing it to the Russians, etc. No. The calls are coming from inside the house. Here are real people doing the same on a college campus

    Two demonstrators with provocative signs drew a counter-protest of hundreds of students at the Stallions.

    The demonstrators arrived before 12:20 p.m. and quickly had a crowd of at least 100 students surrounding them in opposition. The two demonstrators were with the Official Street Preachers, a news outlet that covers events “from a Christian perspective.” There were two signs the demonstrators held – one said “Homo sex is sin” the other said “Women are property” on the front and “Types of Property: Women, Slaves, Animals, Cars, Land etc.” on the back.

    There will be more violence to come.

    4
  10. Scott F. says:

    @Scott:

    What the opposition has to do is figure out how to grind things to a halt.

    I disagree. The opposition needs to stand back and give Trump and the Republicans their mandate. They will need to protect as best as possible the most vulnerable, but otherwise vote party line and let the MAGAs have their day.

    It wasn’t enough to tell American voters that fascism was bad and Trump can’t simply “fix” whatever is ailing them. They are going to have to learn the hard way.

    I already have my “Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” T-shirt on order.

    5
  11. Scott says:

    @Mr. Prosser: He can get a state’s National Guard. If a governor won’t cooperate, Trump can federalize that state’s Guard.

    1
  12. Scott says:

    Jay Powell says Donald Trump couldn’t fire him even if he tried

    resident-elect Donald Trump has sent mixed signals for years on whether he would aim to fire or demote Fed Chair Jerome Powell when he reenters the Oval Office next year.

    But Powell himself laid down a marker Thursday that he won’t be going anywhere, even if Trump tried.

    “Not permitted under the law,” the central bank chair said Thursday in curt but clear responses to reporters who asked about his views on any legal authorities Trump might have in terms of firing or demoting him or any other top Fed officials.

    “No,” he said at another point in a press conference on the question of whether he would leave.

    Let’s be clear-eyed about this. Trump will try. The Supreme Court, on its march to the unitary executive, will uphold him, laws be damned.

    4
  13. Jc says:

    To echo Michael’s point. It really depends on the people around him. He ain’t gonna do the work and how he will know if it is getting done will be through his TV watching and media consumption, as he only has time for those inputs as they focus on him. So when things don’t go according to plan, the sycophants that get chewed out start selling each other out. It will be a show for sure.

    2
  14. DK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    And you cannot promise me that he won’t do that, or that the Army would successfully resist.

    Even if they do resist, people will get hurt in the process. To echo the point Kathy made the other day, whether or not [Trump] is able to govern like a full blown fascist, he and is ilk will maim and kill folks just by trying. And he won’t make the mistake of handcuffing himself with John Kellys this time around.

    The last time [Trump] was in office, hate crime swiftly increased. That’s already starting again; these violent rightwing thugs are already emboldened. The J6 terrorists Trump plans to pardon will be especially dangerous.

    2
  15. Kylopod says:

    The president most responsible for murdering the term “mandate” was Dubya. He and his team used the term to describe their 2004 victory, an election that came down to 100,000 votes in a single state and which involved the narrowest popular-vote margin for a reelected president in American history. Fortunately, history has not looked kindly on his use of the term, and it ended up blowing back in his face when he unsuccessfully attempted a radical Social Security privatization scheme.

    What’s annoyed me over the past few days is how many mainstream pieces I’ve been seeing that throw around the terms “landslide,” “blowout,” and “red wave” to describe this year’s election. It shows such a lack of perspective. If you told any politically aware person in the 20th century that a candidate who won a 2-3-point margin in the popular vote and 312 EVs had achieved a landslide, they’d look at you like you were insane. It also appears to be the third straight cycle in which the House is won by a razor-thin margin.

    Of course Trump called his 2016 victory a landslide, but at least the media didn’t go along with this narrative.

    Trump’s victory was decisive, it exceeded expectations, and it gives Republicans a lot of power. We don’t need to render terms like “landslide” or “blowout” or “mandate” meaningless in order to make that point.

  16. becca says:

    @Scott: I bet Lorena Bobbit will soon have a movement named after her.

  17. Lounsbury says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    … I don’t think how Trump spoke was all that terrible. It clearly connected with people. Yeah, he ducked questions, and in a way that’s different from the average politician. This made him more appealing, since he didn’t sound like the normal politician, who has made big promises and not delivered.

    This is fundamental – he spoke in a manner that was not giving the sense of the Uni educated elite, but a Queens boy – he has a real genuis of self-marketing, a genuine natural talent in speaking to a certain kind of audeince that the Democrats have lost connexion with by speaking in arch academe inflected modes.

    Trump is also good at in-office theater – making it look like he’s doing something for voters. I don’t like it, but perception is reality.

    He is a master salesman. His mastery of the art of marketing is real….

    To get back to my point, I need to keep a keen ear for which Democratic candidates speak in a way that my old high-school buddies can connect with. Bill Clinton, for instance, did that

    Quite yes.

    Although I feel Ms Harris was not at all terrible in potential – indeed without a burden of being Biden’s VP at a time when this was clearly a problem – she really was quite good in her potential (with the weak point of not being effective in speaking to (labouring class) people’s economic pain – but there she was it seems constrained by a loyalty to Biden that while personally laudable… was not the politically best thing.)

    Except at the end when she reverted to the failed Threat to Democracy and Fascism sales point she earlier on seemed to me to avoid largely much of the tone deaf arch priggish Lefty mode of speaking

  18. gVOR10 says:

    You are correct , James, mandate, schmandate. They have the presidency, the Senate, and likely the House. A trifecta. And they bought SCOTUS a few years ago. Is “quadrefecta” a word? All we have is the filibuster, which they can get rid of if we use it. They only got 51% of the vote, but control of almost all the levers.

    1
  19. Assad K says:

    He merely has four years to convince Congress to pass laws and issue executive orders, hoping they pass judicial scrutiny.

    Even if some lower court finds issue, the SC will approve it lickety split.

    1
  20. Assad K says:

    @Lounsbury:
    What’s with this insistence about Trump knowing how to speak to people? Have you heard him talk live, or try to explain anything? If any of his followers went to a store to buy something and the salesperson was talking to them with the combination of incoherence, ignorance and braggadocio that Trump does they would be looking for the next salesperson. Who are these Democrats you accuse of talking down to people? They’re erudite and speak in normal sentences, as do most Republican lawmakers (the latter just lie 10 times as much as the former, but they do it using coherent sentences).

    It is in fact odd to see you complaining about Democrats talking in some high falutin’ way when your own posts are barely comprehensible to most of the readers here (who may not all be formally highly educated but are certainly erudite and informed).

    11
  21. Gustopher says:

    @Assad K:

    What’s with this insistence about Trump knowing how to speak to people? Have you heard him talk live, or try to explain anything?

    Trump is clearer than Lounsbury. 🙂

    He has a target audience, and he speaks in a weird rambling shorthand (yes, rambling shorthand is inconsistent). You are very much watching from the outside.

    Electric boats electrocuting sharks? You hear that as gibberish, but people in his movement will hear that as a playful joke, and that electric cars are bad. And that it triggers the libs who can’t figure that out.

    I’m not going to say “take him seriously not literally”, but he does not treat things seriously even when he apparently views them seriously (based on his actions, we can (after the fact) determine what he is or is not serious to him)

    1
  22. Lucysfootball says:

    @Gustopher: I’m not going to say “take him seriously not literally”, but he does not treat things seriously even when he apparently views them seriously (based on his actions, we can (after the fact) determine what he is or is not serious to him)

    And most people who read this blog would never vote for a person who talks and acts like Trump for any office, and certainly wouldn’t hire that person for any job. We found out Tuesday that half the country would do that (although I suspect if they had a company and were hiring, ten minutes into the interview they would be doing the “thank you for coming in” wrap-up).

    1
  23. Jack says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Bad day at the office?

  24. Jack says:

    Dare I say that had the result been the inverse observations of “mandate” would rule the day.

    I prefer something different. He has the Senate. He has the House. Now perform, no excuses.

    2
  25. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Assad K:

    What’s with this insistence about Trump knowing how to speak to people?

    This is objectively true. He’s president-elect because he knows how to communicate with, apparently, 51% of Americans.

    I hear the condescension and the disconnect when Democrats try talking to working class, less-educated people. It’s a blown-up version of Town and Gown. “We” generally have college degrees, often in areas that mean literally nothing to a plumber or warehouseman. We never listen to them, we talk at them. We offer to help them. Help is hierarchical, it goes from rich to poor, from competent to incompetent. A guy working at Home Depot doesn’t want to be seen as a social failure, the equivalent of a homeless person, needing to be rescued – even if he does need to be rescued.

    My first rule of writing for, or talking to, teenagers is for God’s sake, don’t condescend. They smell it. Same rule for working people: they know when we’re looking down our noses at them. We do look down our noses at them. How many of the people here would be happy to hear their kid is going for an HVAC certification rather than an English Lit degree? I have a useful photo I show when I present at schools. It’s a family pose in which a sullen teenager (me) is secretly giving the finger. I show that, zoom in, and they’re mine, because I am not a teacher or a parent, I’m a co-conspirator.

    The one fool-proof way to avoid condescension is to not think yourself superior. I can’t do this with MAGAs, but I can with kids because I accept that I am the seller, they are the buyer, I need their money and they don’t need my book. I’m their dancing monkey.

    So, I know everyone likes to dunk on @Lounsbury, and God knows he invites a lot of that, but he is fundamentally right: we are snotty college kids trying to ‘help’ people whose lives we know nothing about. There are a few of us regulars here who spent serious time as working people, and may not have degrees, and I think we generally would agree that Democrats have lost contact with working people.

    I forget which hurricane, but some years back I hopped in my Lexus SUV and drove down to an Alabama shelter to help. I was offering to transport people to out of area relatives, hotels, etc. No takers. That’s not what they wanted or needed. What did they need? Diapers and socks and toys for kids. So I drove to Wal-Mart with a list, putting both my vehicle and my Amex Card to good use.

    1
  26. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Jack:
    Yes, actually, I’m trying to figure out how to keep my daughter safe from people you’ve put in power. So STFU.

    7
  27. Eusebio says:

    It looks like the title of Wednesday’s blog post The 51 Percent will not hold up, as the remaining ballots are counted and Trump’s popular vote share drifts downward toward 50 percent. The non-rounded vote share may well stay above 50 percent, but even that’s not a certainty–it could end up something like 50.0 percent T, 48.5 percent H, and 1.5 percent other. I haven’t seen an expert analysis of the popular vote projection because that’s not how we pick the winner, so these numbers are based only on a simple extrapolation of the vote count since Wednesday and a vote total similar to 2020, the latter point seeming to be supported by the outstanding California vote tally.

    Whatever the final popular vote total, I don’t see it changing any claimed or perceived mandate, whether the winner received a rounded-off 50 percent, or 50.1 percent, or even 49.9 percent of the votes nationwide.

    1
  28. Gustopher says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    So, I know everyone likes to dunk on @Lounsbury, and God knows he invites a lot of that

    I treat him with the same contempt as he shows. He doesn’t use that language in his daily live, it’s not Twit Vernacular English used in the Twit subculture that we should be respectful of.

    He treats everyone with contempt, so… I assume he likes it, and it makes him happy.

    5
  29. Lucysfootball says:

    @Michael Reynolds: I agree that the Democrats have lost most of the working class. But I think there is a fine line between condescending and just normal speaking. When Trump talks to working class people, he promises solutions to all their problems. Period. In other words he makes shit up, says I understand, and if you elect me I will immediately cut food prices, cut your insurance by 50%, gas will be under $2, etc. If he promises that what do you do? Try to educate someone why he’s wrong and many people will say you are condescending. I love to argue policy with people, especially if it’s a topic that I know well. I worked in finance most of my life, and have a pretty extensive knowledge of budgets, especially five and ten year plans. If you gave me 15 minutes I could explain to almost anyone who understands basic math why a balanced budget, as Trump is always pushing and saying he will accomplish while cutting taxes, is impossible without massive tax increases. Ditto almost any of his economic proposals. I’ve been told I’m very good at explaining these types of things, but my audience has always been people who want to understand. The problem is that some people want easy answers. I’ll cut your costs immediately is a pretty powerful message. It beats any long-winded explanations that involve the long-term prospects for the overall economy. The Democrats will not lie like Trump, and even if they did, nobody does it better. I don’t think that Harris or Walz came off as condescending, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of white males wouldn’t respond well to a black woman telling them anything. It’s no coincidence that Trump referred to Harris as dumb, low IQ and lazy.
    None of this matters in the short run; perception that someone is talking down to you is the same as if someone is talking down to you. I think a white male who had a similar background to Harris would have done better.

    3
  30. neiniron says:

    so. I have to ask.

    how do you believe that Trump doesn’t have a mandate? he won not only the popular vote but also the electoral college.
    to do that he beat kamala harris so bad it was practically domestic violence.
    but lets remember how he got there.
    he beat Obama, the clintons, the DNC, The RNC too.
    you all say that Trump lies.
    but we weren’t paying 7 bucks for a tub of butter under Trump.
    gas was 1.69 a gallon, I paid less taxes to the government than I ever did any time in my life.
    I could afford a house, I could afford to take my family out to eat on payday.
    we were energy independent for the FIRST TIME since the dept of energy was formed under Jimmy Carter.

    but Trump doesn’t have a mandate.
    the youth of today are telling you that they can’t afford to even have children.
    ALL Trump ran on was the economy, the border and stopping government overreach.
    that’s it.
    but you guys don’t get it. THAT IS WHAT MATTERS.
    so you will either lie to yourselves or predict erroneously that he doesn’t have a mandate.
    you will talk about slowing down the government.
    there’s a way to fix that and it’s called DOGE. You can’t slow down what he abolishes.

    Trump has a mission and we the people have spoken.
    it’s up to you to listen or not.

  31. neiniron says:

    @DK:
    the j6 “thugs” that haven’t had a trial in 3000 days? those guys?

    listen to yourself. the j6 committee destroyed evidence so that others who come behind won’t find it.
    it was found that liz cheney tampered with evidence and subborned a witness.
    the entire committee better find a hole to hide in come january 20th.

    and lets just talk about general Milley for a minute.
    he’s going to be called back to active duty and courts martialed.
    he will get at a minimum summary dismissal without pay.
    he will be VERY lucky if he doesn’t go to leavenworth.

    so when you talk about those “J6 Thugs”, I want you to explain why so many of them no longer have the evidence that was used to convict them and haven’t had a trial yet.

    thanks.

  32. Jax says:

    That, right up there, is why Trump won. The misinformation bubble. This person doesn’t even know.

    @neiniron: He never beat the Obama’s, or the Clinton’s, plural. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and Biden apparently beat Trump so bad it was “domestic violence” by winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

    I don’t buy tubs of butter, that’s usually margarine, and if you were paying $7 for it, I’m sorry you got essentially raped by your grocery store. I do remember paying $9 for a quart of heavy whipping cream, but that was the Covid years. Same with gas. It was super cheap when nobody was driving around because we were on fucking lockdown. It has since gone down in price in my neck of the woods, and I live in one of the most remote areas in the lower 48 states.

    What the fuck do you mean by not having a trial in 3,000 days? It’s only been 1,402 days since Jan 6, 2021.

    2
  33. Michael Reynolds says:

    @neiniron:

    you all say that Trump lies.
    but we weren’t paying 7 bucks for a tub of butter under Trump.

    Look at this compelling logic. And yet, people say you MAGAts is stoopid.

    3
  34. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Jax:
    I can get a tub of Kerrygold – imported Irish butter – delivered, for $5.69. But still Trump lies so. . . . I just don’t get it.

    1
  35. Jax says:

    @Michael Reynolds: And I have no choice but to live among them. Every fucking day, the stooooooopid.

    I just hope they get what they voted for, good and hard.

    Hat tip to Cracker and Luddite. My give a fuck is broken.

    2
  36. Jax says:

    @Michael Reynolds: Does Kerrygold actually come in tubs? I can only buy sticks, for that same price, delivered. 😉

    1
  37. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Jax:
    People come up to me and say, sir, sir, does Kerrygold even come in tubs?

    It does at a Vegas Albertson’s. Normally I like the single big block, but I can do the two stick as well.

  38. just nutha says:

    @Jax: Safeway in Portland, OR, has Kerrygold in tubs, but it has olive oil added. I thought it was going to be spreadable, but I was wrong about that, too. 🙁

  39. Lounsbury says:

    @Assad K: Insistance?
    The results speak for themselves mate. The fact you have trouble digesting that is why you all keep losing.

    It is in fact odd to see you complaining about Democrats talking in some high falutin’ way when your own posts are barely comprehensible to most of the readers here (who may not all be formally highly educated but are certainly erudite and informed).

    I am not in American politics, now am I? Nor trying to win votes – in fact my own mode of communication and whatever faults you may have with it has precisely nothing to do – it is something of an ad hominem as a red herring – logicial error as a response and a whinging pretence.

    IF I were critiquing the Democrats collective failure AND I was saying you should be more like me, then this would be relevant. But I have never ever advised such – in fact rather I have put my finger on Trump’s animal cunning on adaptive communication (as well as noting I rather felt early stage campaign Kamala was doing better than usual Democrats mode of speech).

    Blog commenting for self-entertainment is one thing and the fact Americans struggle, eh… whatever, generally it is the snide and snotty American university campus habit to throw up pretences so I shall continue to cheerfully ignore the whiny whinging on as the reaction to the Americans who comment outside of the Close Circle of correct American Uni-Educated Left proper discourse is hardly any different nor better.

    You all can continue with whinging on and excuse making while patting yourselves on the back for Good & Proper Beliefs and Speech, or face up to faults. I expect the former but one can always hope the latter to not see expansion of Trumpism (which to be clear I principally care about for the nasty international effects).

    @Lucysfootball:

    I don’t think that Harris or Walz came off as condescending

    I believe they did not – and in grosso modo Ms Harris probably inherited the situation too late
    Their errors (on the margins) are ones I would ascribe to the loud ‘Progressive’ base, the comparitively comfortable Left-Uni educated white collar class and the closed discourse of those circles – too much talk to fascism and other intello abstructions, not even Feel Your Pain on Inflation and some pandering promises to fix it (and some throwing Biden under the bus as service to show a break). Of course the Left on the Democrats had spent two years in loud and aggressive inflation denialism and poopooing – see Drum, see here amongst the commentariat

    If there is one Journo criticism of Harris that is worth retaining – she did not speak well and comfortably to the working class economics situation – not the Journo solution / desire for Policies and such things of appeal to the Uni educated -but lacking indeed a fluid Clintonesque

    A genuine weak point, although would it have made a difference given the degree of the shift amongst the voters with wages under USD 50k? Possibly not but it is idicative overall of the Democrats weaknesses in marketing themselves, selling the wrong product to the wrong audiences.
    @Michael Reynolds: The statistics showing a shift over the past 15 years in USA speak for themselves, here the majority commentariat here only want to hear the correct and proper US Uni-campus discourse and agenda, with proper American campus words and sensibilities, rather emblamatic of the general US Left failure. But what is the reaction, ah, well shoot the messangers. Motivate the Base! No hope to win over, motivate the true believers! (very Corbynesque in the end)

    I forget which hurricane, but some years back I hopped in my Lexus SUV and drove down to an Alabama shelter to help. I was offering to transport people to out of area relatives, hotels, etc. No takers. That’s not what they wanted or needed. What did they need? Diapers and socks and toys for kids. So I drove to Wal-Mart with a list, putting both my vehicle and my Amex Card to good use.

    It seems to me that the white collar uni-graduated Left – has lensed the understanding of Labour through uniquely ‘Working Poor” and such working poor are forcibly the proper colour minority and even better gendered (i.e. women) to be achieve the right levels of proper targetting of “compassion.” – An identarian targetting that is a political loser as this election showed.

    There is otherwise relative to labouring fractions of society more than a touch of compassionate snobbery (I am myself no prol lover, but winning elections does not occur with open snobbery, Trump conceals his own brilliantly)

    (the usage is that bobo is ” mix d’égocentrisme ‟libertaire”, de scepticisme ricanant et de consumérisme frénétique. Avec un vague alibi écolo et compassionnel” – it fits well the US Lefties of the University background leaving aside the typical French intello judgment of consumerism)