Republicans love to talk up their "mandate" when Republicans win, and deny that Democrats have one when Democrats win.
So it is this year. Republicans say President Obama's victory is no mandate because he only won 50.4% to 48% of the popular vote. In the electoral college the difference is much more marked. If Florida is decided for Obama he'll win 332-206 (or 303-235 if Florida goes to Romney).
When George Bush "won" in 2000 he actually lost the popular vote 47.9% to Gore's 48.4%. Electorally he barely squeaked by, winning 271-266, and doing that only because the Supreme Court stepped in with a 5-4 decision to prevent Florida from conducting a recount. Yet Republicans claimed a huge mandate for their programs of military spending increases and tax cuts for the wealthy.
When George Bush won in 2004 he took the popular vote by 50.7% to Kerry's 48.3%, with a 286-251 electoral advantage, a lead that hinged on Ohio which had very serious irregularities in the computer voting system built by Diebold, a company with ties to the Republican Party. Republicans again claimed a huge mandate for Bush.
When Barack Obama won in 2008 he won the popular vote by 52.9% to McCain's 45.7%, with a 365-173 electoral shellacking. Yet Republicans claimed that Obama had no mandate whatsoever, that he was wrong to pursue the stimulus programs and the health care and financial reforms he promised during the election and that he was too "partisan."
Republicans say Obama's 2012 victory is not a mandate because it's the worst performance a sitting president ever had, because he "only" beat Romney 50.4% to 48%, or a margin of 2.4%. This is a lie of course: Bush beat Kerry by the identical 2.4% margin in 2004. And they somehow forget that George H. W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992 to Bill Clinton.
Now some Republicans are saying voters gave them a mandate for lower taxes by returning Republicans to the House. This is completely false.
Republicans kept the House because congressional districts across the country are gerrymandered so that incumbents retain their seats. The gerrymandering lock was strengthened in this cycle because Republicans held so many state legislatures after the 2010 census when the entire country was redistricted. That situation has already been reversed in Minnesota, which gave Democrats commanding majorities in both houses of the legislature on Tuesday. But redistricting allowed Michele Bachmann to keep her seat this year; she won by a mere 4,207 votes while outspending her Democratic challenger 12 to 1. Most of the $23 million she spent on the campaign was raised from contributors outside Minnesota.
Because of the way congressional districts are gerrymandered, a status quo House result doesn't tell us what "the people" really want. You have to look at the results a little more closely. The fact is, six Tea Party House freshmen in swing districts lost their bids for reelection. Tea Party rape fantasizers Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their Senate bids in Indiana and Missouri, which should have been gimmes for Republicans. Barack Obama won the presidency. And Democrats held on to the Senate, even though 21 of the 33 Democratic seats were up for election.
The election definitely tilted in favor of the Democrats, but the only mandate they have from "the people" is that they do their jobs, come to a reasonable accommodation with the Republicans and get the economy moving again. The mandate for the Republicans is the same, with additional provisos that they stop sabotaging all legislation and appointments, and abandon their tactic of running out the political clock in the vain hope of some Rovian electoral magic in 2016.
Perhaps it will be easier for Republicans now that their number one priority is no longer making sure Barack Obama is a one-term president.
13 comments:
Yet Republicans claimed a huge mandate for their programs of military spending increases and tax cuts for the wealthy.
Really, you mean No Child Left Behind was what? You fucking Demo-tards are too much. The rate at the very top was cut from 39.6 to 35%. This is your big fucking beef with the world?
Really?
Republicans love to talk up their "mandate" when Republicans win, and deny that Democrats have one when Democrats win.
There you go Niktard! Right back to the (R) bad , (D) good argument style. I knew you had it in you.
In the meantime, Harry Reid says he has a mandate to raise taxes.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83514.html
It's almost like he times his statements to make you look like a dumbass fuckstick.
Well here I am, I’m sure you have all been waiting for me to post something, here’s some random ramblings in no particular order.
You win some, you lose some, you get disappointed sometimes but you keep moving onward.
Romney may have played it too safe the last few weeks of the campaign.
Romney isn’t a real conservative deep down, he articulated it like a second language many times. I’ve said on this blog several times that I’m not a huge Romney fan. Just like Mark and Nikto disagree with the Citizens United verdict, I disagree with the verdict made this week. I remember when “people were going to get involved and come together to make the world a better place” on this blog 4 years ago. I don’t think that has happened on a mass scale.
I don’t ever think I’ll forget the Life of Julia ad...women are just wards of the state I guess.
Negative campaigns still work – Kerry got swiftboated, Romney got Bained.
Did Chris Matthews really say “Thank God we had that hurricane last week”? If Hannity would have said that you would have screamed to the hills, but it was Matthews, he’s on your team, no biggie I guess.
Romney isn’t what is wrong with America...Obamaphone lady is what is wrong with America. If you think that’s racist, it’s not.
End of the Tea Party because of Akin and Mourdock? I’m not a member of the Tea Party but the Tea Party really doesn’t do social issues much do they? They are more about taxes and spending. Hell there has been posts on this blog for the last 7 years saying the GOP is dead. Wishful thinking.
Yes, Obama won by 2.8 million votes, but he got 10 million fewer votes then he did in 2008. Romney got 3 million fewer Republican votes than McCain did. Those folks turn out, and the result would have been different. They ended up staying home, and I overestimated GOP turnout in my prediction.
Regarding your new calls for Amnesty...you forget history – McCain favored amnesty – didn’t help him a whole lot did it?
Mark is much more of a partisan democrat than in years past. In years past, he would have absolutely been curious to know exactly who gave the order to stand down at Benghazi. With all the information that is known now, we know it wasn’t just a reaction to a video, it was a coordinated planned attack, and the Obama administration went out and claimed, multiple times, it was just a response to a video. Also, the situation on Staten Island was and is dire for people living there...no food, electricity, clothes, water...sure the Obama photo-op happened but that was it. FEMA did not respond in a timely manner, NY residents are on youtube confronting and yelling at Bloomberg pleading for basic supplies to live on, and the photo-op Obama gave was good enough for Mark even though many people were abandoned there Katrina style. Getting into the details and timeline of the response is sooooo 2005.
The times they are a changin indeed. He used to care about things like that happening, not any more – there’s a home team democrat to drag across the finish line. You can say others writings on here are based in anti-government bias – your writings are just as biased and I don’t believe you when you say you would “be happy to talk about Benghazi” – if GWB was in charge you would have posted about it non-stop.
If your “bubble” comment was directed at me, all I did was get a prediction wrong. I’d also say that someone was in a bubble when they said, 1 year ago, that “What we are seeing here is the beginning of a minority block that will likely eclipse the conservative base.” In regards to Occupy Wall Street
http://markadelphia.blogspot.com/2011/10/we-are.html
Your predictions this year were a regurgitation of what Nate Silver was saying and when someone disagreed with or questioned Nate Silver, a shock took over this blog of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport. Nate Silver ended up being right, kudos to him. His statistical model wasn’t the only statistical model out there as we all know the Univ of Colorado had one as well that ended up being wrong. There are a lot of statistical models out there – statisticians build them all the time. Some models are great, other models are great for a while then regress back to the mean. All of the models couldn’t have been right.
I think the increase in the latino vote was a factor, but not the earth shattering factor you all think it is. When I look at the final numbers - in 2012, there were about about 91.6 million votes cast by whites, 16.6 million by blacks, 12.7 million by Latinos, with the balance of 6.3 million votes spread among other groups. Compare that with 2008, when the numbers were 98.6 million whites, 16.3 million blacks, 11 million Latinos, and 5.9 million from other groups.
So the African-American vote only increased by about 300,000 votes, or 0.2 percent, from 2008 to 2012. The Latino vote increased by a healthier 1.7 million votes, while the “other” category increased by about 470,000 votes. 1.7 million votes is a lot of votes no doubt but you’d need to get another million to get to the margin of victory Obama got – 2.8 million. Also, the number of 1.7 million is dwarfed by the decline in the number of white voters this election. Almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008. This isn’t readily explainable by demographic shifts either; although whites are declining as a share of the voting-age population, their raw numbers are not declining quite yet.
Had the same number of white voters cast ballots in 2012 as did in 2008, the 2012 electorate would have been about 74 percent white, 12 percent black, and 9 percent Latino (the same result occurs if you build in expectations for population growth among all these groups). In other words, the reason this electorate looked so different from the 2008 electorate could be almost entirely attributable to white voters staying home. The other groups increased their vote, but by less than we would have expected simply from population growth.
Put another way: The increased share of the minority vote as a percent of the total vote is not the result of a large increase in minorities in the numerator, it is a function of many fewer whites in the denominator. Why did they stay home? Each probably has their own reason, and these posts are long enough.
In years past, he would have absolutely been curious to know exactly who gave the order to stand down at Benghazi.
That's because it didn't happen.
http://news.yahoo.com/detailed-account-benghazi-attack-notes-cias-quick-response-020906681--abc-news-politics.html
"There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support," said the official. The official's comments appeared to be a direct rebuttal of a Fox News report that CIA teams on the ground had been told by superior officers to "stand down" from providing security support to the consulate.
Enough with the Fox News crap.
What's frustrating about this is that it's all sour grapes about Bush. Since you still can't admit how much of a fuck up he was, you have to find your own Iraq and your own Katrina to feel better about yourself. The problem is that these events aren't comparable and your're reaching. Rather than look for hypocrisy in me, why don't you fix the problems that your party has and change?
Perhaps you'll get the message after you lose another election...or maybe another.
Yahoo news?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/yahoo-news-fires-david-chalian-source-133662.html
Their Washington bureau chief was fired for saying that Republicans are happy to have a party while black people are drowning. That's totally a biased source of news, and I don't trust them.
There - that was fun and easy.
Genetic fallacy, last?
Provide me with a non-biased (aka non Benghazi Meltdown Syndrome) source on your assertion and we can have a reasonable discussion. You would think after being told a whole boat load of wrong information about the election by your media that you would at least question the information you are getting now. Don't take my word for it, though.
http://markadelphia.blogspot.com/2012/10/and-thats-end-of-libya-malarky.html
You'd think after being sold a boatload of disinformation by your beloved Administration, you'd be somewhat questioning of them. After all, asswipe -- the investigations are still ongoing since they've been slow-walked for weeks and weeks. Asshole.
Enough with the Fox News crap.
I've given you multiple non-Fox sources. Shut the FUCK UP you cock-sucking fanboi. You know it's rotten and you don't want your hero to be tarnished. That's going to bite you in the ass one of these days. Worse is what it will do to the country.
>Genetic fallacy, last?
You realize he's making fun of you, right? Specifically, your penchant for declaring "that's biased!" without actually explaining what the bias is and why that bias makes whatever was said incorrect. "Bias" has always been this magic teddy bear you hug to comfort yourself with. Try to learn something Mark, for once..
I'm wondering why a certain name hasn't come up yet in the Benghazi meltdown...hmmmm:)
Mark's right! It's Bush's fault! And Libya has oil, so the eevil Koch brothers must be involved, too. It's a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!
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