One Last Battle: Will Obama Be Able to Claim A Mandate?
With early voting ended, election monitors deployed in all the dodgy states, and polls giving Barack Obama a significant lead, a stolen election seems highly unlikely. But it's not quite time to relax our anxious vigilance. Markers have already been laid down to steal Obama's mandate.
What narrative might the mandate snatchers peddle? Ideological conservatives will likely insist that voters punished Republican politicians for betraying the conservative gospel. After all, they have a vested interest in framing the vote as a rejection of Bushian corruption and incompetence, rather than as a verdict on their vision. Such was William Kristol's gambit Monday in his New York Times column. Republican economic and foreign policy conservatives, dismayed by the lock evangelicals have on the party, will likely blame Sarah Palin for the defeat and dismiss the significance of a Democratic win. Moderate and business Republicans will proclaim that Americans are centrist, were able to relate to Obama, the well-tempered, centrist statesman, and were worried about the erratic, volatile McCain and his not ready for prime time running mate. Many will say it was the economy, stupid, and that the real news is that Obama did not win by a wider margin.
The mainstream media is likely to amplify the voices of the mandate-deniers for its own purposes. Two tendencies already evident in the last weeks of the campaign are likely to come to fruition in the morning after pundification. First, leading columnists and reporters have projected their own inside-the-Beltway centrism onto the American public, oblivious to the mounting evidence that Americans have become not only more Democratic, but also more progressive. Second, desperate to prove their relevance in the new media landscape, mainstream news outlets have contorted themselves to disprove the ludicrous McCain campaign claim that they are 'in the tank' for Obama. Expect many in the mainstream media to counsel Obama to 'correctly' interpret the voters' mood and forebear 'partisanship'--read, liberalism. Newsweek's recent cover article by Jon Meacham, claiming America is truly, deeply a center-right nation, was a dress rehearsal for the November 5 buzzkill.
Do not dismiss the predictable morning-after analyses as merely content-filling, white noise spin. These debates about the meaning of the election have had real consequences in the past, and Democrats have not fared well in these contests in a generation. Ronald Reagan turned on the Hollywood charm and converted a throw-the-bum-out election into an epoch-making mandate for radically conservative governance. Bill Clinton looked on nearly helpless as his comfortable 8.5% margin over Bush the elder was declared a defeat by Republican Senator Bob Dole. (The independent candidacy of Ross Perot had prevented Clinton from topping 50% in the popular vote. Contrary to conventional wisdom, political scientists widely agree that, if Perot had not been in the race, Clinton would have still won.) Clinton perforce trimmed his sails, abandoning public investment and middle-class tax relief for a policy emphasizing deficit reduction, in part, to placate Perot and his supporters.
What's a Democrat to do in this can't win for winning scenario? Obama, in recent speeches, has been brilliantly laying the groundwork for an election night I-have-a-mandate speech. The larger the popular vote margin, and the greater number of Red States won by Obama, the more an Obama administration will be enabled to declare a mandate and act on his promise of change. That part is up to us.
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Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and claimed a mandate - Obama should claim a mandate no matter what the size of the vote. The Republican era is finished.
Well seeing how GWB lost by a half million votes, and the far right claimed to have a mandate and a whole lot of "political capital", it seems that an Obama blowout and complete rejection of all things conservative will be a mandate for EVERY SINGLE THING the far right opposes.
As of 2000, winning the presidency qualifies as a "mandate". As you recall, Bush did not win the popular vote but nonetheless claimed a "mandate". Since the Democrats will be happy to accept that Obama has a mandate, and since the Republican position is that an electoral win is a mandate, there should be no objections.
Yes he will, but the media and the opposition will claim not, no matter what the tally. Also I believe GW Bush claimed a mandate because of 9-11 and the wars. Are they not on-going. I think so.
Barack will have more political capital after this election than bush could have ever dreamed of having. Please take the high road, Barack. No chest thumping, please. Just jump in there and lead us out of the bush and all of it's strangling weeds. Oh, number one, find out what the hell really went on for the last 7 1/2 years!!!!!!!
george bush claimed a mandate. look where it got him. Getting elected and being competent is the only mandate you need.
A win is a mandate.
This is a referendum on the failed policies of the republic party.
The People are speaking loud and clearly.
No way will the American people allow the press and pundits of the Republicans to steal the magnitude of this mandate that is about to unfold. Senators Obama and Biden may even win Indiana, where Senator Obama is right now and, yes, the Republicans will deny the Dems and avoid embarrassment in WV, GA, and AZ, but the writing is on the wall. We are throwing the bums out and they should be held accountable. They have made a mess of things - the Iraq War, the current economic crisis due to their deregulation and the low down, nasty campaign they have run. ALL this deserves a real 'thumpin' and it is comin' soon! We won't gloat or boast. We will simply be grateful and relieved to have our country back from lobbyists, special interests and Wall Street and they will never get it back because we learn from our mistakes. Thank God.
I believe this election is a referendum on the Republican Idealogues. They were wrong and have pushed the US and the world to the brink of disaster. The Republican Party has no other choice but change or split in half. Those who look at the world through an us or them prism will find themselves on the outside looking in. The overwhelming feelings of the country for change will demand that. Obama can be the transformational historical figure that pushes the US back to greatness by actually capturing the talents of the entire country to make the changes needed. He has a difficult road and his decisions will not always make everyone happy but he will not exclude anyone and that is the genius of his campaign and will be the legacy of his presidency.
Wouldn't a strong approaching or achieved 60 in the Senate bear out a mandate?
Paulie Sabol
Lack of a mandate in 2000 certainly did not hinder George Bush...A mandate is irrelevant.
There's one other reason that the media might like to deny a mandate -- to anyone. As long as there is a sharp 50-50 division in the country, the media have our attention in these rather inane shout fests between members of the parties. Should we ever lose interest in them and decide we wanted to be informed of the actual news instead, they would be faced with the expensive task of covering the news. They much prefer to have screamers comment on the few well-known stories everyone has heard about -- witness the decline of CNN Headline News into a forum for "discussion" (mainly right-wing, since that's what uses the most decibels). And on CNN proper, if it weren't for the shout fests, we'd have to spend 24 hours on runaway brides (otherwise, it costs money!).
We should remember that, if Obama does win [and the bigger tha margin the better], then we are at the beginning, not the end.
We cannot fall back into apathetic inaction and allow the powers that be to carry on with the breaking down of the Obama/democratic momentum; given an Obama victory, we need to set our sights on creating legislative tools for OURSELVES, so that we can make our voice heard.
We need to seriously address the voting situation--I fear too many will be turned away today--but right behind that effort should be an effort to craft a movement for national referendum voting.
We will NEVER have a functional democratic republic if we depend on MSM talking heads and Corporatist pundits to tell us what we will support and whether or not our opinion is valid.
Too many prime issues--a social safety net [including a UHC system, higher education programs, etc.], the War on Drugs, Pre-emptive war policies, free market fundamentalism, alternative fuels, addressing global warming--unless we forge a means of making ourselves heard, these issues will be decided for us, and largely by appointed individuals who are not subject to the will of the people.
This idiocy has gone on long enough, and now we may well be on the cusp of opportunity.
Certainly one of the most glaring omissions from this election process is the "mandate" word. It is obvious. The way an Obama win has been portrayed in the mainstream media, almost as something like a stolen election, an "oh my god he really is going to win" kind of thing, is a shame. It's also a lie. Obama was headed for a landslide long ago, and McCain never really had a chance, and yet the interest is there to create an illusion of a close competition, a dead heat between the candidates, to give life to a dying party and steal thunder from an emerging one. It is important to have a mandate, it empowers the president. Dems haven't bothered to fight for it, but they should.
As far as the question of whether our country is turning progressive, or is a center-right nation, that is unanswered. Yes, I think we're becoming more diverse and more tolerant just by the sheer march of time. Rove's predictions a few years ago about trending was wrong. However, I also look at the slippage in women's rights, gay rights, the environment, freedom of speech, a conservative supreme court, religious creep in civil affairs, and I worry.
Having grown up in the 70's, I barely recognize this nation as it stands now. It has behaved shockingly conservative in recent years, and smart, progressive policy has ground to a halt. Maybe we can reverse the trend, but it will take education and re-conditioning.
The mandate would be more for the American people to hold their elected representatives accountable and better serve their interests.
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