Tag Archives: mandates

national news, political news

No mandate here, Donald

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Donald Trump and his collection of MAGA goons/cultists keep yapping about a “mandate” that the Nov. 5 presidential election delivered to the GOP ticket.

Mandates are born from electoral landslides. Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, while significant, doesn’t constitute a mandate.

To wit:

  • 1952, Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower scored a landslide win over Adlai Stevenson. His mandate was to build an interstate highway system that revolutionized motor vehicle travel in this nation.
  • 1964, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson won election huge over Barry Goldwater and then embarked on the Great Society effort that produced landmark voting rights and civil rights legislation.
  • 1972, Republican President Richard Nixon swept to re-election over George McGovern and then managed the following year to end our combat involvement in the Vietnam War.
  • 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan capitalized on President Carter’s bad luck with the Iranian hostage crisis and high inflation. His mandate enabled him to restore national confidence in our government. Same for the mandate he secured with his 49-state landslide in 1984 over Walter Mondale.

So, if Donald Trump is going to boast about mandates in the 2024 election, I must remind y’all that all the examples I cited came from campaigns that produced enormous popular vote margins, not to mention Electoral College wipeouts of historic proportions.

At last count, Kamala Harris is continuing to whittle Trump’s vote margin down to less than a majority and a plurality that stands at 1.55%.

Will the new president heed those numbers as he continues to assemble his executive team? Hardly.

medical news

A reckoning is on its way

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It’s impossible to predict that such an event will occur, but one can certainly hope that it does … which is what I am going to do.

I am going to hope that a day of reckoning will come to those who continue to resist mandates to (a) wear masks (b) maintain social distancing and (c) receive inoculations against a killer virus.

Local governments across this great land are requiring people to protect themselves — and others! — against the virus that has killed more than 700,000 Americans; the number is sure to increase.

I cannot determine how the reckoning will occur or what form it will take. I just have this hope in my ticker that it comes to those who continue to insist that government “has no business” dictating how people can protect themselves.

Which, of course, is nonsense.

The government is able to tell us to wear seat belts when we travel in motor vehicles; it can tell us to put out cigarettes when we enter indoor public place; it can set speed limits on our public rights-of-way; it can require we have auto insurance when we drive.

Do I go on?

You get my point.

The COVID-19 virus is a killer. It needs to be stopped. Government has a role to play in ensuring we protect ourselves and our loved ones. And, oh yes, even perfect strangers.

Let’s quit the politicking on this matter.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com