Trump did not authorize

The big lie that Donald Trump told after the 2024 election was that he won a “powerful mandate” from the American people. He didn’t, and neither did his MAGA movement. There is no doubt that America is a divided country. But most Americans voting in the 2024 presidential election actually agree on one thing: They don’t want Trump to be their president. Nearly all the votes have been counted, and we now know that approximately 50.2% of the votes were cast for someone other than Trump. It’s a small anti-Trump majority, but it’s enough to vex the incoming president, who has been doing everything he can to cultivate himself since election night to achieve “a political victory the likes of which our country has never seen. There has never been such a victory.” ” His allies on the right are equally outlandish in their claims that America is fully on its way to greatness.

Why were Republicans so eager to claim they had won a “landslide” when the results showed one of the closest presidential elections in the post-World War II era? Because they know what Democrats sometimes forget: Politics is about ideas, and a president who is perceived to enjoy overwhelming support from voters is more capable of changing not only policy but the trajectory of our politics. This is what happened to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s and to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Roosevelt and Reagan had the numbers necessary to authorize it. Not so with Trump. That’s why as he prepares to re-enter the Oval Office, progressives must unpack the electoral narrative that put him there. Yes, Trump defeated Kamala Harris. But not by much. The slim Republican majority provides an opportunity for Democrats and a shrinking but potentially decisive cadre of rational Republicans to prevent a president with only a majority of the popular vote from making the worst appointments and most dangerous policies.

Let’s run some numbers, shall we?

Trump’s lead has historically been narrow. As the Council on Foreign Relations’ post-election analysis noted, the president-elect’s 1.5-point advantage over Harris was “the fifth-smallest margin in 32 presidential contests since 1900.” Trump won 4 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020. Presidential throne.

Voters rejected a rubber-stamp Senate. Republicans took back the Senate with a 53-47 majority, but that was largely due to the small-state advantage that typically favors Republicans. Nationwide, 1.4 million more voters voted for Democratic Senate candidates than for Republicans. In key swing states, Democratic candidates won all but one of the races, although Harris lost every battleground race. This reality will put heavy pressure on the 20 Republicans running for re-election in 2026.

The house is very close. The Democrats start the 118th Congress with 213 seats; they will start the 119th Congress with 215 seats. Were it not for extreme partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, they might have regained control. “The only mandate that exists is for Congress to work together,” said House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. But if the past two years are any indication, House Republicans may not even be able to work with each other. Special elections – some of them triggered by Trump bringing House members into the Cabinet – could shrink the Republican Party’s slim 220-215 advantage and could even give Democrats House seats.

“No one is forcing far-right policies on the American people,” Jeffries said. He’s right. Polls and referendum results in “red” states such as Missouri and Alaska show voters support rising wages and the populist economic agenda advanced by progressives such as Bernie Sanders. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it, the real charge among voters is “to fight the wealthy forces who manipulate the economy for their own benefit.” This is a mission that Democrats should embrace.