Trump won with 49% of the popular vote vs Harris' 48%, with one of the smallest margins of victory ever - just 0.15% of eligible voters. He won just a handful more electoral votes than Biden in 2020, and far fewer than Obama or Reagan.
That is not an overwhelming mandate, nor does it represent a majority of the country.
But then Trumpists never let the truth get in the way of their own mythmaking. They said they had an overwhelming mandate and the support of most Americans even in 2016 when literally millions more people voted for Hillary Clinton. Hell, they didn't even think they actually lost in 2020. I'm surprised they can square the cognitive dissonance of Trump being elected to a third term.
> Trump won with 49% of the popular vote vs Harris' 48%, with one of the smallest margins of victory ever
Irrelevant, we don't elect presidents by popular vote.
> That is not an overwhelming mandate, nor does it represent a majority of the country.
He won the Senate as well. Increased the majority in the House. Increased his votes in NY, CA. And among blacks and hispanic voters.
All while almost being assassinated (twice!) and having the mass media peddling lies against him for the last 8 years (Russiagate!). He wasn't like Obama who had the media backing him.
It absolutely is a mandate. It's a clear mandate because his Party has both houses and the Presidency!
> Irrelevant, we don't elect presidents by popular vote.
How the details of the election process actually works is tangential to what kind of mandate they have.
If some bizarre election mechanism that a country followed meant that a party getting 1 vote more than the opposition gave it 100% of the power, that's how elections in that country would work, but that doesn't mean the winners would have a strong mandate from the electorate as a whole.
In Nazi Germany, Hitler made the argument that, well, since 33% of the voters (17% of the population) voted for him, far ahead of the runner-up (who only got 20% of the vote), and his party made up the majority of the ruling coalition (196 out of 267 out of a total 620 seats), he should have all the power.
The system certainly gave him power for all those reasons, but it's farcical to say that 17% of the population voting for him was an 'overwhelming' mandate for Germany to embark on their insane politics, and it's also farcical to say that +1% of the vote is a clear mandate. It's a mandate, but a slim one.
The system was also designed with a lot of checks and balances and social norms in places, but as it turns out, if you collude with what were supposed to be adversaries and break all the soft (and hard) rules, you can get a dramatically radical agenda implemented, disproportionate in its scale to the popular support you enjoy.
That is not an overwhelming mandate, nor does it represent a majority of the country.
But then Trumpists never let the truth get in the way of their own mythmaking. They said they had an overwhelming mandate and the support of most Americans even in 2016 when literally millions more people voted for Hillary Clinton. Hell, they didn't even think they actually lost in 2020. I'm surprised they can square the cognitive dissonance of Trump being elected to a third term.