NakedHunterBiden
Joyeuses fêtes !
Donald Trump Has Not Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President — His popular vote has fallen below 50% as his margin over Kamala has narrowed considerably as more votes counted.
Donald Trump Has NOT Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President
Donald Trump’s popular vote total has fallen below 50 percent, and his margin over Kamala Harris has narrowed considerably as all the votes are counted.
www.thenation.com
Trump’s victory was not of “epic” or “historic” proportions. There was no “landslide” for the once and future president, as Fox News suggested repeatedly in postelection headlines. The election did not produce the “decisive victory” for Trump that the Associated Press referred to in the immediate aftermath of the voting. Nor did it yield the “resounding defeat” for Harris that AP reported at the same time.
That won’t matter to Trump, who claimed a mandate even when he lost the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots. Four years later, Trump refused to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes, and denied that majority support for Biden in the 2020 election amounted to anything akin to a mandate.
These numbers are better for the Democrats than what was recorded on election night, and that many pundits continue to suggest. That does not mean, however, that a clearer picture of the results should dissuade the Democrats from looking for ways to reform their party. Even if the margins are narrower than initially imagined, it is still the case that the party failed to beat Trump and a Republican Party that embraces the destructive politics not just of its presidential candidate but of the billionaire class. This is a time for serious reflection on mistakes that were made, and on challenges going forward, as part of a needed examination of how to build a multiracial, multiethnic working-class coalition that can win decisively, and not just at the presidential level but also in the struggle to regain control of the House and Senate in 2026.
What the numbers do provide Democrats and progressives, however, is an argument against despair and surrender, especially as the debate opens over Trump’s cabinet picks, judicial nominees, and legislative priorities.
“Research suggests that mandate claims, despite their tenuous connection to reality, can be effective in affecting legislative behavior,” notes Julia Azari, the associate professor of political science at Marquette University who authored Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. “Political science studies show that legislators will change their behavior in response to the perception of a mandate election—but only for so long.”
The first months of Trump’s presidency will go a long way toward defining the character of his second term. Democrats and a handful of thoughtful Republicans have the potential to temper Trump’s worst excesses, and to assure that the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is maintained. When Trump pushes back against congressional oversight by claiming that his appointments and policies reflect the will of the electorate, members of the House and Senate can counter that specious claim by explaining that the majority of the American people did not vote for him.
