Originally published at: Trump Does Not Have Mandate - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. Newspaper headlines have called Donald Trump’s victory “decisive,” “massive,” “resounding,” “historic,” and “sweeping.” Trump himself has described his win as a “landslide.” On election night, he claimed that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” None of those things are…
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It is a puzzle Democrats will need to solve.
The solution is pretty simple, the Democrats need to become the party of the people. UNFORTUNATELY, this will never happen, and though all the fault doesn’t land on the Democrats, they are certainly responsible for a portion of it.
It’s good to be old in these times.
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Trump Smash!
A winning agenda for the bare plurality of American voters.
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True but the oligarchs do and electoral funding demands abetted by the Citizen’s United decision assure they have the functional majority. Money talks in this country, much too loudly.
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“Righteousness is a wide path. Self-righteousness is a bullhorn and a blindfold.”
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Puzzle? The GOP bought out the entire media in low population areas.
The tax free church is openly politicking against the Democratic Party in apocalyptic terms and has done so for the last 25 years of my personal experience.
The people of America are under blanket propaganda in the places where it is cheapest to reach them.
The media in wealthy areas is owned and operated by people who show a significant financial advantage in voting for a tax cut.
They own the rich by their wallet, and the poor out of propaganda and religion.
Do not blame the Dems for any of this. The Left had its throat cut in the 1980s when the unions were busted.
What we’re seeing now is the fruit of the defunding of the Left, and the deregulation of the Right.
All Dems can do in response is start shouting and wait for the infantile rich and the vicious and ugly religious to kill themselves and as much of the country as they can.
We are entering the days of old, and from those days sprang the New Deal. America is going to understand very soon and very deeply that the rich are idiots that require them.
Three things need to happen:
Churches can no longer operate tax free and with no financial oversight.
Unlimited money in politics needs to end.
The judges that the Heritage Foundation placed need to be excised completely.
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Pete Hegseth?
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Excellent article…lots of good factoids.
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"Moreover, recent public opinion polls reveal that Trump’s professed policy agenda is very unpopular. "
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Millions voted for trump and now his agenda, the one he spouted on the campaign trail, is unpopular?
Gonna be a lotta busy face eating leopards methinks.
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The headline might have said instead that Trump wants to do what people really do not want. But he did win the election so there is obviously some disconnect between what the majority of people want from the political system and what the political system is.
The question is, how do Democrats reveal to voters at a visceral level the thousands of literal cuts into their bodies, families and pocket books that Republicans want to do before it gets that far, and they are basically dead or battered into submission? That is actually a pretty tough question.
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It is very difficult to overestimate the stupidity of stupid Americans who support the policy positions of the candidate they voted against. Of course opposition to Trump must be organized & relentless in order to ameliorate the harm that is coming to Trump’s voters who lack even a modicum of political savvy. However, telling us we lost a close election does not undo the sheer stupidity of those Trump voters who oppose Trump’s policy positions. Sadly, there is no easy or quick way to fix stupid.
However, more than 1/3 of Americans who were eligible to cast a ballot did not vote. That is a huge voter pool to draw from. Democrats need to get busy organizing and educating their non-voting constituencies.
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Nice numbers, to bad they didnt vote that way.
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Fabulous reporting. It helps that data is becoming available to parse the results of the election and this article elegantly illuminates the argument for progressive policies in spite of a center-right electorate’s perception of itself as being, well, center-right. That’s good news and better news, we have AOC on deck to be the Congressional Explainer-in-Chief. She gets it. And we should relish her ability to frame the issues for the nation. She’s a total bad-ass because she knows what she’s talking about and she knows the other side’s weaknesses and how to get under their skin. Going forward, I’m thinking that Trump’s a lame duck starting last November and AOC has the pulse of America like no one else.
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I agree that the Orange Asshole (and draft dodger) does not have a mandate, but that’s almost immaterial. He did hit the trifecta though. and if he can maintain Congressional majorities again in 2026, a mandate doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the Dems blew it by wasting time on emphasizing non-critical issues. If they had concentrated completely on pocketbook issues (remember Carville’s “it’s the economy stupid”), they would now be in a position to affect economic outcomes, and have some surplus “mandate votes” to risk on marginally popular social issues.
Once again, the Dems blew it by trying to fit too many clowns in the car by too much emphasis on only marginally popular social issues. Social change is brought about by mandate/trifecta wins, not by good intentions.
Once again the Dems have shown their inability to organize a two car funeral!
Can you imagine being that guy’s AA sponsor? “C’mon, Pete, you said you’d stop!”
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I think Harris did a decent job of that in the debate but the majority of Americans went for the guy who was shouting, “They’re eating the cats and dogs!”.
The only way these folks are going to learn is for them to touch the hot stove over and over.
And even then, I’m skeptical.
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Blaming the Dems when they had their funding base destroyed 40 years ago is facile.
It is not the Dems with the unending non-profits to funnel zealots into and build out a lunatic fringe.
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All this information about voters preferences means nothing when MSM neglects to do their job of informing those who bother to watch/listen to MSM. Out of concern about lack of access to the White House or loss of viewers should they report the truth as it is and not both sides are equal MSM has become useless as a valid information source. Decades of the right wing disinformation machine howling that MSM had a liberal bias intimidated the billionaire owners of MSM broadcast and print media into moving to the right and indulging in false equivalency reporting. That all these policies are so popular with the majority of Americans yet they vote for politicians who are against these policies shows me that that vast right wing media machine has captured the minds of more Americans by not reporting at all on anything but negativity towards Democratic administrations and politicians. The sins of omission by right wing media is so effective that Americans who get their information from them do not know/cannot know what and who is really on their side. A person can only know what their information sources tell them. MSM has failed in it’s journalistic duty to truly inform with the truth and right wing media has so succeeded in intentionally keeping the truth from the masses we end up with uninformed voters casting ballots based on emotion rather than intelligence. Limbaugh and Murdoch never imagined their agenda could so wildly succeed.
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One man can donate $250 Million to a candidate and the sacred First Amendment allows that money to be spent on raw, slanderous AI created advertisements that convince the masses a candidate is the opposite of what that person truly advocates. And it worked.
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- 64% of Americans, but 92% of Trump supporters, think illegal immigrants make the crime problem worse. (Pew 2024)
but . . . - Only 19% of Americans think legal immigrants worsen the economy and 24% think they make the crime problem worse. (Pew 2024)
Is it 64% or 24%? Polls and statistical claims are great until they give me dog angle head.
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