Trump earned his title, but his mandate claims are a myth

Source: The Hill
by Mark Mellman

“Democrats don’t contest the fact that President Trump and his fellow Republicans earned the right to steer our national government, a right Trump sought to deny his predecessor through false statements, fraud and ultimately violence. Notwithstanding his frequent statements to the contrary, however, Trump did not earn a mandate for his radical policy changes. Trump takes obvious pride in winning the popular vote, but his margin was as tiny as … let’s just leave it at tiny. Fewer than 50 percent of voters cast their ballot for him while his margin over Vice President Harris was less than 1.5 percentage points. Pretty puny by historical standards. Only nine presidential elections out of the 49 for which we have popular counts were won with lesser margins. Nineteen presidential elections yielded true landslide victories of 10 points or more. Trump’s advantage was nowhere close to that. Second, that’s not how our system, or voters’ brains, work.” (01/29/25)

https://thehill.com/opinion/5112246-trump-mandate-myth/