When I was looking at the numbers a few days ago, I predicted that Donald Trump was going to end up with less than 50% of the vote. Unfortunately, I didn't post it. You say who cares, he still won.
It matters even though it doesn't alter who won. Even after a pandemic and pandemic driven inflation led incumbent parties to lose vote share in every democracy that had an election and with voters angry at President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the Democratic Party because a guy flipped a fair coin and it came up tails, he still could not get 50% of Americans to vote for him despite a massive propaganda network and a campaign of lies by the sociopathic felon.
It rained yesterday, so voters decided to take it out on the incumbent administration. Even in the most favorable possible environment, more than 50% of voters voted for somebody other than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is claiming a mandate when his proposals are less popular than Vice President Harris' proposals according to a blind poll. But when your campaign is a torrent of lies and you win less than 50% of the vote and your opponent's proposals are more popular than yours, then you don't have a mandate.
I need to say thank you to Daniel Dale for his honesty, hard work, and his exposure of the lies of Donald Trump.
For the third consecutive presidential election, the Republican presidential nominee is running a relentlessly dishonest campaign for the world’s most powerful office. Wildly exaggerating statistics, grossly distorting his opponent’s record and his own, regularly just plain making stuff up, Trump is lying to American voters with a frequency and variety whose only precedent is his own previous campaign... it may help whip up his loyal base
All presidents lie. Historians say, however, that there has never been a president who has lied this much, has lied about so many different things, or made up so many things out of whole cloth.
Harris, a far more careful speaker than Biden, has made false claims about Project 2025, Trump’s economic record and her own policy shift on fracking. That’s in addition to various disputed predictions about what Trump would do in office if elected.
But when it comes to the facts, the two sides in this election are just not alike.
I have to carefully inspect the transcripts of Harris speeches to see if there might be a claim or two that might be inaccurate. Trump tends to make dozens of obvious false claims in each speech.
In other words, Trump habitually tells more public lies in a single public appearance than Harris tells over the course of a month or more.
Again, you don't have a mandate when you lie like this because nobody will ever know the share of the vote you would have been given if you had been about as honest as a normal candidate. If you believe the respondents in exit polls, then the biggest issue seems to be inflation. They don't say that they voted to get a solution to inflation. However, those who are enduring severe hardship did vote 3 to 1 for the guy who will make it worse. A majority of voters, 54% of them, say that they are doing about the same or better than they were four years ago. About the same, Vice President Kamala Harris won 69% to 28%. She won those who are doing better 82% to 14%. He won those who are doing worse, 46% of the electorate, 81% to 17%. 77% of voters said that they were experiencing moderate or severe hardship because of inflation. The only thing that there's a "mandate" for is to lower inflation.
The reason this matters is that Donald Trump has made it plain that he intends to implement an extreme agenda that is unpopular. But that's not what voters want. Most voters did not vote for him. They don't want his extreme unpopular agenda.
Voters prefer her policies over Donald Trump's.
As presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in polls. But if the race were solely about their policies, Harris would win handily. That’s because voters — whether they know it or not — overwhelmingly prefer the vice president’s agenda to the former president’s.
These eight questions were drawn randomly from a recent YouGov survey, which blind-tested voters on more than 100 policy proposals. Nearly all of Harris' proposals receive majority support among registered voters. Only half of Trump's did. Trump and Harris are arguably both competitive on immigration, foreign policy and the economy.
Part of Harris’s advantage overall is that her policies appeal to voters across the political spectrum. Maybe this strategy sounds obvious, but it hasn’t been to Trump — at least for most of the campaign. He largely catered to his base, and it shows.
But Harris bests Trump on pretty much everything else, including health care and the environment. Harris' proposals are much more popular among undecided voters. Heck, even Trump supporters like much of her agenda.
Again, voters prefer Vice President Harris' proposals to Donald Trump's proposals. So, this is not because voters prefer Donald Trump's proposals or like them. This was ignorant voters lashing out to punish the incumbent administration regardless of whether they merited it or not and regardless of policy preferences. It is my view that they weren't looking for solutions. They just wanted to punish the incumbent administration and express their bigotry. Therefore, Donald Trump, his incoming cabinet, his administration, his campaign team, and his voters are badly misinterpreting the results if they believe that the election results give them a mandate to carry out his policies.
The Nation puts this in context
As of Monday afternoon, Trump was at 49.94 percent, while Harris was at 48.26, according to the authoritative Cook Political Report’s tracking of results
So, the failure to win a majority won’t cost Trump the presidency. But he’s lost his ability to suggest that he trounced the Democrat. In fact, she’s now trailing him by just 1.68 percent of the vote.
Let’s put this in perspective: Trump is winning a lower percent of the popular vote this year than Biden did in 2020 (51.3), Obama in 2012 (51.1), Obama in 2008 (52.9), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (53.2), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8), Reagan in 1980 (50.7), or Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.1). And, of course, Trump numbers are way below those of the presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “unprecedented and powerful” mandates, such as Richard Nixon’s 60.7 percent in 1972, Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1 percent in 1964, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 60.8 percent. As Trump’s percentage continues to slide, he’ll fall below the thresholds achieved by most presidents in the past century.
Harris, on the other hand, is looking like a much stronger finisher than she did on election night. In fact, the Democrat now has a higher percentage of the popular vote than Presidents Trump in 2016 (46.1), Bush in 2000 (47.9), Clinton in 1992 (43), or Nixon in 1968 (43.4). She has also performed significantly better than recent major-party nominees such as Trump in 2020 (46.8), Trump in 2016 (48.2), Mitt Romney in 2012 (47.2), John McCain in 2008 (45.7), George W. Bush in 2000 (47.9), Bob Dole in 1996 (40.7), George H.W. Bush in 1992 (37.4), Michael Dukakis in 1988 (45.6), Walter Mondale (40.6), Carter in 1980 (41), or Gerald Ford in 1976 (48).
A cartoon by Clay Bennett
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Daily Kos
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