November 12, 2024
On what Trump's victory doesn't mean...
I was pretty hard on national Democrats last week after the election. Now it’s national Republicans’ turn. I’m just going to go through a few of their talking points since they retook control of government and lay out where they might be a skosh misguided.
Republican politicians and pundits have been claiming a mandate. There are two problems with that. (1) Control of the House has been so tightly contested that some networks only began announcing a Republican majority yesterday. Others waited until this morning. When your margins are that slim, you don’t have a mandate. (2) Mandates aren’t a thing. Every time a party claims one, it loses it two years later, which means it never existed. Take Barack Obama, a president who in 2008 had every right to believe he had a mandate. He performed so well in the election he won Indiana. I know what you’re thinking and yes he did. He also had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a 257-seat majority in the House. A mandate, right? Wrong. In 2010, Democrats lost 6 seats in the Senate (it could have been worse were it not for some poor Republican candidates) and a stunning 63 seats in the House, the most House seats lost since 1948. Maybe Obama would say those losses were worth it — most of them can be blamed on Obamacare, which is now popular — but I wonder if he wishes he’d been a little less sure of his and Democrats’ invincibility.
Republican politicians and pundits are saying the election signals a realignment of working class and minority voters to the GOP. Maybe. Maybe not. It was one election. What if Democrats learn their lesson from this election? What if Republicans take the wrong lessons from it (i.e. believe they have a mandate)? What if, as has previously been shown, Trump is the only Republican who can reliably draw these voters? This was his last election. The GOP is going to have to work to keep them, which leads me to my final point.
Republican politicians and pundits say Trump will deliver on his promises. Well, he’s got some work to do. Inflation may continue to drop, but prices likely won’t go down. Crime may go down, but then again it may not — that’s a local issue out of any president’s control. Will Trump bring down housing prices? How? Will he end the war in Ukraine? Again, how? Will that ending keep Putin at bay or encourage him? What about the war in Gaza? These are just some of the things Trump has promised or implied are under his control. What about the things that aren’t? What if the housing bubble bursts, which seems entirely possible? What if there’s a recession, which is a cyclical phenomenon and for which we’re due in the next few years? What if there’s another terrorist attack? All this is to say Republicans in power should put down the bubbly, roll up their sleeves, and stop nominating Kristi Noem for Homeland Security secretary.
So that’s that. Today’s link is along the same lines, with additional points worth noting. I hope you enjoy it. (One quick note: The link is paywalled, but only if you’ve used your allotted number of free articles. I apologize, but the column is that good.)