It’s not surprising that the various toadies, lickspittles and henchmen who have attached themselves to the Trump movement are repeatedly insisting that Trump’s re-election win — which is one of the narrowest in presidential history — was actually a staggering landslide that carries with it an enormous mandate.
It’s not surprising, but it’s still pretty hilarious. Here’s Representative Byron Donalds on Fox Business’s Kudlow igniting the last remaining shreds of his dignity to make the case, presumably debasing himself to make the case for a Cabinet position.
"Donald Trump has a mandate,” Rep. Donalds claimed bizarrely. “He has the greatest presidential mandate, probably since Reagan in 1984. So, to have these blue state governors and these blue city mayors decide that they are going to interpret federal law how they see fit in the face of Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory is egregious.”
Yeah, no.
For starters, here’s what Ronald Reagan’s electoral map looked like in 1984.
OK, wait a second — technically, the colors were different that year. The current pattern of Red/Republican and Blue/Democrat has only been with us since the 2000 election, when we all stared at the maps for weeks and “red state” and “blue state” entered our lexicon. So in 1984, each network still went their own way with their own color schemes. (‘‘One network map of the United States was entirely blue for the Republicans,’’ Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro recalled. ‘‘On another network, the color motif was a blanket of red.’’)
But you get the point. Whatever the actual color, the 1984 Reagan results are what a “landslide” with a “mandate” looks like.
And Rep. Donalds wants us to believe that Trump’s re-election map is the equal of Reagan’s.
That’s a win, sure. But a 312-226 margin of victory isn’t remotely the same magnitude as Reagan’s 525-13, or for that matter, other re-election landslides like FDR’s 523-8 or Nixon’s 520-17, or even near-landslide re-election margins like LBJ’s 486-52 and Eisenhower’s 457-73.
If anything, Trump’s map looks a lot like Biden’s map from 2020 — roughly the same spread, as you can see here.
Of course, there’s a real difference here, in that Biden actually got a majority of the popular vote and beat his opponent by 7% there, while Trump did not and only edged out his opponent by less than 2%.
But even if we just focus on the Electoral College picture, they’re pretty close. I don’t remember MAGA or the media insisting Biden had a mandate from his landslide then.
So Trump’s victory, which Rep. Donalds and others in the Trump cult are insisting is truly awe-inspiring, looks about the same as the last election.
What about some of the others that came in between? What about Obama’s races?
Well, the 2012 results are a slight bit better than the 2020 and 2024 margins, but still in the same ballpark:
While the 2008 results blow all of these out of the water:
Still not a landslide, but a lot more of a claim to a “mandate” than anything Trump has today. And of course, we all remember how Republicans — led by Trump and his birther movement — refused to accept Obama as a legitimate president, much less one whose agenda they were required to accept without question. Ha ha, no.
George W. Bush won with two narrow wins, not even breaking 300.
Bill Clinton? Bigger margins in both elections:
Both of these Electoral College victories — hey, someone wake up Byron Donalds — both of these Electoral College victories were, like both of Obama’s wins, much bigger than Trump’s this year and, once again, as with both of Obama’s wins, the Republicans absolutely did not roll over and accept that their opponent had crushed them in a “landslide” that yielded a “mandate.”
And all of this discussion about Electoral College maps elides the really important point, which is that in the popular vote, Trump didn’t even scrape out a clear majority of voters (currently 49.88% and shrinking) and only beat his opponent by a slim margin of 1.6% (putting him behind Jimmy Carter in 1976 and George W. Bush’s squeaker re-election in 2004).
It’s a win, yes. And in the most important sense, that’s what really matters, as the considerable powers and perks of the presidency are now his to control, God help us.
But it’s not a landslide, and it doesn’t come with a mandate. And yes, that actually matters quite a lot. Donalds and other Republicans wouldn’t be pushing it if it didn’t.\ They’re trying to will a “mandate” into existence here — in the media narrative, if not in reality — to shut down any objections from the media and any opposition from Democrats about their most heinous plans.
This is especially true with Trump’s promise for a “bloody” deportation program that would target tens of millions of people in this country and have catastrophic consequences on the people, politics and economy of the United States. “Border Czar” Tom Homan insisted here that Trump’s “mandate” means Democratic governors and mayors will be opposing not just Trump, but the Will of the American People™ as well.
But again, there’s no basis in reality.
Trump’s win is a win, but a fairly unimpressive one in the grand scheme of American politics. It doesn’t remotely come close to the true landslides in American electoral history but, more than that, it doesn’t even stand out when compared to more recent wins by Clinton (2x), Obama (2x), and even Biden.
They’ll keep on insisting it’s a mandate, but there’s no reason anyone else should join them in that delusion.
Let us remember that after the 2008 election, Barack Obama told Eric Cantor, "Elections have consequences," and republicans saw this as the height of arrogance because, to paraphrase Horace Greeley, not all republicans are racist, but all racists are republicans. Well, I exaggerate a little.
But that's the point. Joe Biden would have been "acceptable" in the way that child of the 60s Bill Clinton and Black man Barack Obama were not, and by then republicans were too far gone. George W. Bush did indeed claim mandates. I really think Ronald Reagan had a mandate not to be Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale. Considering the damage he did--Charlie Pierce the other day referred to John Wilkes Booth as the actor who did the most to harm the U.S. until Ronald Reagan--he more than fulfilled that duty.
Thanks for clarifying when the designation of red vs blue states became consistent. I thought that I had watched elections where republican wins were blue and democratic ones red. And it bugged me that I never managed to nail this down. . . until now. Cheers!