Tag Archives: election 2016

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Election result: no ‘authoritative command’

mandate-gif

My dictionary describes “mandate” thusly: an authoritative command or instruction.

That’s pretty clear, correct?

So, it’s fair to ask: Does a presidential election in which the winner captures more electoral votes than the other candidate, but who fails to win — by an apparently growing margin — the popular vote deliver a “mandate” for the victorious candidate?

I would say categorically, “no!”

Here is what we are facing with the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. He won, by a comfortable margin, the electoral votes he needed. His opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is continuing to pile up more actual votes than Trump.

The president-elect made some bold pledges while winning. He’s going to build a wall across our southern border, ban Muslims from entering the country, repeal Obamacare, revoke trade deals.

He said that “I alone” can fix what he believes is wrong with the country.

Does an election result that we’ve witnessed give him license to do what he promised to do?

I do not question the legitimacy of Trump’s election. He won this race fair and square. The system wasn’t “rigged” to ensure his election. Sure, some will argue that it was. Keep saying it. It’s not so.

However, I do not sense that voters delivered a “mandate” for him to make sweeping changes.

Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 with 43 percent of the vote. Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 also with 43 percent of the vote and was re-elected four years later with 48 percent; George W. Bush was elected in 2000 with one more electoral vote than Al Gore, who won more popular votes than Bush. Neither of those men’s victories commanded “mandates” any more than Trump’s. Their victories were equally valid.

For that matter, John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote, and by a margin of fewer than 140,000 ballots. Is that a mandate … an “authoritative command”? Hardly.

Trump’s fans are continuing to crow about the mandate that their guy captured while defeating a candidate virtually every media pundit, politician and so-called “expert” knew would become the next president.

The Trumpkins need to tone down the boasts. They need to understand that effective and constructive governance is a shared responsibility, that the winners must work with those they defeat.

In this case, more than half of those who voted ended up on the losing end of this election, which adds volume to their voice.

Trump’s mandate? He needs to proceed with great care and caution.

media news, national news, political news

Punditry produces its share of annoying phrases/words

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Thank goodness this election season is coming to a close.

The next one is likely to commence the moment we know who the next president will be. Then what? We’ll get a fresh dose of annoying phrases and/or words from the punditry and political class to which we listen on cable and broadcast news programs.

I’ve collected a number of these words and phrases over the years.

My newest member of the annoying phrase pantheon is “baked in.” Pundits are saying that voters’ opinions of the two major-party presidential candidates are baked in, which is a kind of shorthand for saying that their minds won’t change … no matter what we learn about the candidates.

A good friend of mine is annoyed by the word “pivot.” We hear that one when politicians seek either to (a) change the subject of a discussion or (b) change his or her mind on a public policy issue.

Let’s not forget “double down.” Mark Halperin and John Heilmann — two of the best political journalists in the business — wrote two “Double Down” books chronicling the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. When a politician doubles down, that means he or she is ratcheting up the rhetoric on a policy statement that more than likely has been met with a negative response..

Don’t they ever “triple” or “quadruple” down?

My all-time favorite pundit phrase — which politicians of all stripes have adopted — is “at the end of the day.”

I ought to initiate a new drinking game. Take a swig of hooch every time you hear a politician or pundit say “at the end of the day.” I listen for this phrase whenever I am watching a TV news discussion.

I have a theory about why pols and pundits are so fond of “at the end of the day.” It’s a set-up phrase. It is meant to convey an aura of wisdom for the very next thing that’s coming out of the mouth of the pol or the pundit.

“Well, Chris, here’s my thought on that. At the end of the day, we are going to learn that the sun will set in the west tonight.”

Do you get my drift? When the TV smart guys use “at the end of the day,” they mean to make themselves sound smarter, more urbane, more sophisticated than they really are.

We’ve heard a lot of this kind of rhetoric over many years. It annoys the daylights out of me.

I’m going to settle in the for the night. At the end of the day, I’ll be sure to double down on doing something worthwhile this evening before I pivot from my baked-in routine.

national news, political news

Recalling the first time

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I am in a reminiscing kind of mood today.

I’m thinking of the first vote I cast for president of the United States. It was 44 years ago; that’s 11 presidential elections ago! I was 22 years of age. Newly married. My wife was pregnant with our first son. I was full of exuberant idealism.

The Vietnam War was still raging. My candidate for the presidency wanted to end the war quickly. I had returned from service in the Army as confused about the war as I was when I reported for duty at a place called Marble Mountain in the spring of 1969.

He got my vote on Nov. 7, 1972. Sen. George McGovern needed a whole lot more votes than he got that day. He lost the election huge to President Nixon.

I was proud of that vote.

Eleven elections later, I am decidedly less proud of the vote I am about to cast. To be certain, my enthusiasm for presidential candidates has had its ups and downs. Some campaigns got me far more excited than others.

This one, though, feels different — and it’s not in a good way.

You might ask: Is this a difficult choice? No. Not at all. My preference is clear. Both major-party candidates are deeply flawed. One of them, though, is far more flawed than the other.

When it’s over — and I expect we’ll have a new president chosen by the end of the night Tuesday — I am going to cling to another hope.

It will be that the loser will accept the result, deliver a concession speech that at least contains a semblance of grace and agrees to support the next president.

Do I expect all of that to happen? Will the person who should lose this contest — Donald J. Trump — toss aside the stuff about “rigged elections” and do the right thing? I am not holding my breath.

However, as they say: Hope springs eternal.

Having declared my general unhappiness with the choices we face, I remain proud of the fact that I have the right to make that decision. I will go to our polling place Tuesday morning excited that I will have my voice heard.

I just wish I could be as proud of the vote I am about to cast as I was the first time.

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We’re polling ourselves to sleep

This just in: Hillary Rodham Clinton might win Georgia’s electoral votes if the election were held today.

Got that? But here’s the kicker. The next presidential election ain’t happening until November 2016. That’s more than three years from now. As the saying goes, it might be a dozen lifetimes away from now. Heck, it might be a hundred, or a thousand lifetimes.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/georgia-2016-poll-hillary-clinton-95343.html?hp=l3

It’s all kind of interesting, I suppose, to release these polls on the spot. But they matter not one little bit in the grand scheme.

HRC might not run. I’m betting she will, though, especially when she sees polls that show her putting places like Georgia in play. President Obama lost the state in 2012, but not by landslide proportions.

So much of this polling just feeds the frustration some of us out here in Flyover Country have about the national political media. They’re obsessed with the horse race aspect of these campaigns. Yes, they do cover the issues — such as what candidates say about the economy, national defense, the environment, the big stuff.

The public seems to demand so much of this horse race coverage that the media fall into the trap of reporting on all these polls even when there still are years remaining until the next election.

Enough of the polling, already.