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democracyindistress.com |
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Lowering the Bar: A
Mandate for GWB?
Even as I am writing this there is a
talking head (Joe Walkins, Republican Strategist) on CNN demanding that the
Bush Administration has a mandate because “they won by three and a half
million votes!” I don’t have the time this morning to do
the research but I am pretty sure it would take only a few minutes on-line to
track down some quotes from 1996 and even 1992 talking about how Bill
Clinton’s victories in those years did not constitute a mandate, though both
margins in the popular vote far outweigh the margin of victory this year. In fact, not counting the ugly stepchild
of the 2000 election, the popular vote this year was the closest race since
Jimmy Carter defeated Ford 28 years ago in the 1976 election by 1,682,790
votes. So, I believe, according to Republican
spin, just winning the popular vote is now a mandate for your platform. Of course, the case could be made that
the mandate comes from not only the Presidential election, but also from the
Republican gains made in the House and Senate and in many state and local
races too. It was the loss of
Democrat seats in Congress that pretty much nixed the idea of Clinton having
a mandate in 1996 when he won the popular vote by 8,203,602 votes. But they are not. They are holding on to their mandate
because 3,510,358 more people apparently voted for Bush. Here are the margins of victory in the
Popular Vote going back to 1976: 2004 – 3,510,358 – Bush over Kerry 2000 – 539,947 – Gore over Bush 1996 – 8,203,602 – Clinton over Dole 1992 – 5,805,344 – Clinton over Bush 1988 – 7,077,023 – Bush over Dukakis 1984 – 16,877,890 – Reagan over Mondale 1980 – 7,417,813 – Reagan over Carter 1976 – 1,682,790 – Carter over Ford How
come, every time a pundit starts going off about the Bush Administration’s
3.5 million vote mandate they are not immediately challenged with these
numbers? Or have they been and I just
haven’t noticed? This morning, the
Democrat talking head, responding to Walkins’ near chant of a 3.5 million
vote mandate for his team was pretty much left sitting there going, “there is
no mandate. No there isn’t... There is not.” I
believe that most Democrats, when challenged with the fuzzy logic of these
Republican spin artists, believe that the American public is intelligent
enough to see the absurdity of the argument.
And they are. But the
Republicans base their strategy on Advertising and Marketing principals,
which play on people’s psychology and make the facts mostly irrelevant. Stay
on message, repeat the message, and eventually, it will become the
truth. And the media follows. A week after the election, a week of
having every Republican spin artist in the country drilling the mandate
message to the people and to the media, the conversation it turning into what
the Bush Administration will do with their mandate, not if there is even one
in the first place. Imagine
if the Democrats could get this focused, and if they, on top of this, were
basing their arguments on fact and logic.
Could the Republicans counter this? 11-09-2004 AFL |
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