It’s a cold and rainy morning in Washington.
Last night, a few hundred supporters gathered outside the White House to celebrate Obama’s reelection. Driving through downtown D.C., an occasional group of revelers passed by on the sidewalk; others walked around them quietly. Obama won reelection last night, but the past four years have taken a toll. The country is deeply divided, maybe nowhere more so than the capital.
National Journal’s Ron Fournier reports:
Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.
If the president begins his second term under any delusion that voters rubber-stamped his agenda on Tuesday night, he is doomed to fail. …
“The mandate is a myth,” said John Altman, associate professor of political science at York College of Pennsylvania. “But even if there was such a thing as a mandate, this clearly isn’t an election that would produce one.”
He pointed to Obama’s small margin of victory and the fact that U.S. voters are divided deeply by race, gender, spirituality, and party affiliation. You can’t claim to be carrying out the will of the people when the populous has little shared will.
Obama has no mandate. The latest numbers show Obama with a margin of 2.6 million votes nationally. In 2008, he won by nearly 10 million. He’ll still face a strong Republican House, which now has (at latest count) around 57 million Americans relying on it to keep the executive branch in check. He’ll also face the repercussions of his first-term policies: the unemployment that hasn’t waned, the economy that hasn’t recovered, the terrorists that haven’t been defeated, the Iranian mullahs that haven’t been dissuaded.
The best news for Obama is that, as his campaign kept reminding voters, this was his last election. Another such victory, and he would be undone.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the election resulted in a stalemate, a reaffirmation of the status quo, kinda like the War of 1812.
"If the president begins his second term under any delusion that voters rubber-stamped his agenda on Tuesday night, he is doomed to fail. …" n nThe exact thing could have been said about Bush in 2004. And, fail he did, ushering in the age of Obama. Obama is also poised to fail, hopefully ushering the age of the Republican young Turks, Ryan et al. n n n n
We have finally entered an era where "The least horrendous option" is officially and philosophically where the country wants to take itself. People, for better or worse, were endorsing the emperor who they feel is the least insane and dangerous and only feeds the Christians we don't know, to the lions. n nIf I were Obama I'd declare Martial Law, suspend elections and term limits and rule as a dictator for life. Americans wouldn't rise up.
“The mandate is a myth,” said John Altman, associate professor of political science at York College of Pennsylvania. “But even if there was such a thing as a mandate, this clearly isn’t an election that would produce one.”
He pointed to Obama’s small margin of victory and the fact that U.S. voters are divided deeply by race, gender, spirituality, and party affiliation. You can’t claim to be carrying out the will of the people when the populous has little shared will.
Anyone who has read David McCollough’s, “Truman” can relate to what is predicted and what probably will happen in the next four years. Harry Truman’s claim to greatness happened because of what he did between FDR’s death and his election to his full term. After that it was one disaster after another culminated by the Korean War which was brought about because his arrogant Secretary of State, Dean Acheson (who would “not turn his back on Alger Hiss”) declared South Korea outside of America’s defense perimeter. McCollough goes deeply into how Truman’s “victorious” 1948 campaign so infuriated Republicans and conservative Democ-rats (and they were a presence in the Party even outside the South) that they would not work with him or pass any of his proposed legislation. For the foregoing reasons he left the Presidency with 25% popularity and regained his stature due to remembrance of his first term’s policies in later years.