Well, the first thing I want to say is, "Mandate, my ass!"

The title comes from an opening line from Gil Scott-Heron's song B-Movie. Over the course of his spoken word performance, accompanied by a wonderful late-1970s/early 1980s funk groove, Gil Scott-Heron broke it down that there was no way that a guy who got maybe around a quarter of all potential eligible voters, and that it boiled down to half of the eligible American voters didn't vote in the first place, whether due to apathy, dislike for any candidate on the ballot for President that year, or any of a number of structural barriers to voting (persons with disabilities, or who work and have no early voting options, etc). Reagan managed to win over 25% of the eligible voters and the rest who bothered to cast a vote did so for Carter or Anderson in 1980. So the case that Ronald Reagan did not have a mandate for his first term is very defensible. 

So why go back into some funk and R&B history? Because we have a bigger problem now, and that bigger problem also does not have a mandate. Here is a graphic to break it down:

 

 

Again: Mandate, my ass. Overall, the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot went down compared to 2020. Trump does get a plurality of the popular vote, but not by much of a margin. Here's a graphic that breaks down how Trump's popular vote victory margin compares to other presidential candidates who won their election:

Not much of a mandate to see here, right? That might be cold comfort to us about right now, especially given that the GOP of 1980 was far less toxic than the GOP of 2024, which I realize is truly saying something. Trump is still going to be a disaster in his second term, and unfortunately he will drag the rest of us down with him. But he starts from a relatively weak position and he really doesn't have as much Congressional help as he would need. He'll have a Senate that will have a composition pretty close to what Trump had during the first half of his first term. So, in theory, most of his nominees for various positions should sail through. That is as bad as it sounds. There are still a handful of GOP Senators who will vote with their Democratic counterparts on occasion. Maybe that keeps some of the worst of Trump's picks out of office. Some legislation could pass through the reconciliation process, although there are some limits on how often that can be used and it only pertains to budgetary items. The GOP will only have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives - arguably narrower than this most recent Congressional session. We really needed to win the House outright - even with narrow margins. But when you look at the numbers - probably 220 GOP to 215 Dem (there is still one seat in California that has not yet been called, but the Democratic candidate in that contest is leading) - passing legislation through the reconciliation process will be a heavier lift than it was in 2017 when the GOP enjoyed a pretty hefty margin in the House. That year, a tax law got passed (and it was a disaster) and an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed in the Senate after passing in the House. With margins in the House that could go as low as 217-215 at times, I am not sure what will actually pass with GOP votes only. 

So think narrow margins, and think that the GOP will do what it always does with less than overwhelming margins: overreach. Assuming we have free and fair elections in 2026, which is now something we have to question, voters will likely use the midterms as a referendum on the governing party, and the GOP will likely lose its House majority. Senate will be a heavier lift in 2026 for the Democratic Party, but let's not rule it out just yet. We're no longer defending Senate seats in states Trump won handily. Keep in mind that I am making the assumption that things are still "normal" and that the 2026 elections will function as they are supposed to. That could be a mistaken assumption, and it is not an assumption that I would necessarily defend. What I am noting is that in more normal eras, Trump would quickly find himself a lame duck. Depending on how much infighting happens in the House, Trump may be a lame duck from almost the get-go. 

I also think it is important to make note of the House and Senate margins because they paint a different picture than the narrative that the GOP spins and that the media stenographers dutifully report. Most of us with a functioning central nervous system assumed that the Democratic Party was likely to lose the Senate. The map was awful, and one red-state Democratic Senator was already retiring. A 52-48 or 53-47 margin sounded plausible to me. Had Harris won, the Senate would have made her life hell. The bigger point is that if there were a mandate, GOP Senate candidates should have swept the same swing states Trump managed to win. Outside of Pennsylvania, the GOP struck out. And the GOP Senate win in Pennsylvania looks more like a bloop single than a home run, if you ask me. The GOP should have been able to pad their narrow majority from the current Congressional session if they indeed had a mandate. Instead, the GOP is going to have an even narrower majority in the House. A Presidential candidate claiming a mandate usually has lengthy coattails. Trump had the reverse. 

So the starting position for Trump for this term will be weak. That doesn't mean Trump will do no damage. He most certainly will try and in a number of cases succeed in causing damage. Remember that plenty of the small minds behind Project 2025 (which I tried to warn you about, if you recall) will be placed within the White House and these goons will be on a mission. Real people will get hurt. There is no way to sugarcoat that unpleasant reality. The thing we need to continue to repeat over and over again is the truth: Trump and his pals in the House and Senate have no mandate at all. They have narrow majorities and no real solutions to our problems, unless your problems include a perception that Elon Musk does not get enough tax breaks (and if that's you, there's no way I can help you...you're on your own). 

We are going to have to commit as citizens to protecting some very imperfect institutions. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll note first that institutions don't protect themselves and that institutions don't just magically protect us from a fascist threat. Those institutions are made up of individuals with the expertise necessary to carry out specific functions and their success is what protects those institutions. We each have our own institutions we can protect. I work in the higher education sector. I can certainly see to it that students remain informed and to the extent that I still conduct research, I can do what I can to make sure that my particular science remains trustworthy. I will refrain from going in the weeds, but there are everyday actions that I can take and that my counterparts will hopefully take that will keep those two institutions stable. You might be a librarian. Or you might be in the military or law enforcement. Perhaps you are a climatologist and work for NOAA. Whatever your institution, make sure that you continue to observe the professional ethics that you have normally observed. Don't deviate from that out of fear. Since most of our fellow Americans have been conditioned to have a knee-jerk dislike for institutions (something that now goes back a good five or so decades), we also need to be vocal advocates who can break down in the simplest terms how our institutions work to make your life predictable and ideally a bit better. And that gets to something else important. A narrow plurality of voters chose a man over our institutions. The institutions we have are what give our lives a certain rhythm, a certain predictability, and a certain amount of recourse in the event something goes sideways. A man cannot do that. He may try, or in the case of Trump, he'll just watch TV and golf. If our institutions wither on the vine under Trump's watch, we've got nothing once he's gone. Rebuilding all that is lost will be a bitch, to say the least. So think about how to protect those institutions that matter to you and those you care about. And if you do see those institutions being destroyed before your very eyes, find others who can inspire you to act. I know that the Maidan uprising (known as the Revolution of Dignity) in the winter of 2013-2014 offers a template. So do the protests going on right now in the Georgian Republic, where the ruling party has effectively given up on democracy altogether and the nation is being plunged into a constitutional crisis. We can fight back, and the fact is that there are far more of us than there are of those who get to sit in their comfy offices and suites or who do their dirty work of stifling us.

This is going to be a very long four years. I hope we're ready.

And now for Gil Scott-Heron's classic that inspired this post: