Centerfield

Todd, I don't believe the president will govern like he campaigned. He has a mandate because his ideology controlls all three branches of government. His second term will be devoted to accomplishing his domestic agenda.

What gives him a mandate is a swing from -500,000 to 3.5 million lead in popular votes. What also gives him a mandate is a pick up of 4 Senate seats. And a pick up of 5 House seats. His percentage in Mass was greater than 4 years ago.

On the other side of the coin, I couldn't help but wonder at Jennings calling this a deeply divided electorate.

I don't think a 3% margin of victory counts as a mandate, certainly not for radical changes in tax policy or social security.

I would call it a vote of confidence in Bush's policies over the last 4 years. He'll still have to earn public confidence for new initiatives.

50% +1 and control of all three branches (let's face it, he will get two picks) give anyone a mandate.

NOUN:
1. An authoritative command or instruction.

2. A command or an authorization given by a political electorate to its representative.

I wish I had that JFK quote handy.

Donald, Jennings is right. There is distrust and anger among millions of Americans. But, the president's mandate nullifies it.

I just pray that Bush doesn't think his mandate is from the Christian Coalition. If he acts like it, his total control of the fed Govt will disappear in two years.

Wow
7 million more people voted for Bush than in the last election....

And I know mine went from him to Badnarik.

As anyone seen a good breakdown of the voters...who changed and who was new.

A friend of mine said alot of evangelicals stayed home in the last election because of the DUI story. Has anyone else heard this??

I've heard that the DUI effected Evangelical turnout in 2000 several times in the media. They say it was Rove's reflection on the president's 2000 numbers.

Current news reports say that Evangelicals account for 4 million votes. The implication is that the rest came from anyone who attends organized religious service on a regular/weekly basis.

This explanation supports the moral values issue reported in the media.

Do you think 9/11 caused a significant number of Americans to embrace an organized faith for the first time or go back to faith after a long absence?

A few minutes ago, CNN reported that among married couples with children, 59% voted for Bush and 40% for Kerry. This makes sense to me: this bloc of voters thinks about passing on their values to their kids and worries about their kids growing up in a terrorized world.

He doesn't have a mandate, and never acted like he needed one. And with control over the house, he probably doesn't.

He already has his agenda set and is counting on two years of unducklyness.

Problem is will all his screwups give him two years. If the people ever come to realize how poor a job he has done at keeping this country safe, it will be because of a terribly disasterous moment.

I agree, Marc. What were the concerns of the 40% who voted for Kerry?

4 million votes? Try an order of magnitude higher. The evangelicals are 90 million strong, and can field nearly 40 million votes if so inclined.

The hard-core Religious Right, a much smaller voting bloc, are often confused by the Left with the evangelicals but are really just a small and somewhat extremist subset, maybe 10-15% of the total at best. Evangelicals split about 60/40 GOP/Dem.

Bush has a mandate by definition. Over half the popvote, gains in both House and Senate, control of both, awarded by the voters. An overwhelming mandate, no. But a mandate nonetheless.

Tully,

But how broad is the "mandate"? I don't accept that it extends to all of the domestic aspects of the GOP agenda.

As with all Presidential mandates, Todd, it's exactly as broad as Congress and the courts allow it to be. Regardless of the popvote.

For those who shiver at the thought, remember that there's a whole lotta inertia involved, as Clinton discovered.

Tully, are you suggesting that 40 million of the president's votes in this election were Evangelicals? Is that part of some polling data?

Jamie, I think what Tully is talking about is confusing evangelicals with the religious right.

Rick, I saw a link on your other blog where Beliefnet lists all the different types of religious breakdowns. Could you link it here?

Todd,

I think what we are talking about is a general mandate. Of course if you bring up a specific issue, you may or may not find broad support. That is why I mention earlier that I hope Bush doesn't govern like his mandate is from the Religious Right.

IF he does, he will find many GOPers in the House out of a job in two years. Just like Clinton did way back when.

In my entire adult experience with voting, the word "mandate" has been traditionally used to describe presidential (and other) election results when they have been overwhelmingly in favor of one candidate. In other words, it has NOT been used to describe simply winning, but winning pretty big. And that's not what happened. Bush eked out a victory, and you have to wonder what it would have looked like if the democrats had fielded a more able less eastern egghead candidate, and if Bush hadn't had the jacksonian impulse born on 9/11 working for him 24/7.

Now you can go to the dictionary and use it to defend the idea that mandate means the same thing as a simple authorization, but then you're changing the traditional meaning of the word as it has been used to describe political results.

Now undeniably Bush has increased power to enact his agenda, and we'll see where he goes with that. But supposing he does so and the result is that the GOP gets broomed out because of some sense that the country tipped too far one way, then that's pretty good evidence to me that there WASN'T a mandate.

Do the math. If Bush enacts policies that alienate the centrist voters who chose him most reluctantly, and 2 or 3 percent go the other way because they've had enough, who has a "mandate" now? His real mandate, if he is smart, is to look to the middle and make us happy by doing the nation's business in a responsible and bipartisan way.

Hey, call it what you want, it doesn't change reality. If Bush decides to enact policies that the broad middle doesn't support, he risks damaging his party's prospects over the longer term. Politically, he's much better off pushing ideas with broad support. My forecast calls for him to do more things like the prescription drug plan, wherein he smiles optimistically, and opens the vault by giving more tangible benefits to voters without doing anything to control the costs or provide the revenue to pay for these things. No hard choices, deferral of accountability. IMO, this makes the GOP most vulnerable because it has abdicated the sense of fiscal responsibility it spent decades promising while the democrats were in charge.

As far as parents with kids supporting Bush goes, this is best explained by people voting on the basis of a narrow construing of self-interest. Is anyone at all surprised that people that got big tax refund checks in the mail the last couple years favored the guy who sent them by 6-4. isn't it surprising this number wasn't higher? I'm sure these people are afraid for their kids, and this may have contributed, but parents also looked askance at the mmany very young men and women that the president put in harm's way, which I think counterbalances things quite a bit.

Bush's words in his victory speech about appealing to the entire nation are just that-words. He didn't do it before and he sure as hell has no reason to do it now that he has a solid majority in Congress. I'm not sure he could even if he wanted to; with new conservatives coming to the Senate that see politics as a zero-sum game, I'm not sure they would let Bush reach out if it involves any kind of significant compromise.

Every president that wins a reasonably signficant victory considers it a mandate. This is usually a mistake because it fails to consider that many, if not most, are voting as much against the other guy as for you. But in Bush's case, it doesn't matter because there is nothing left to constrain him or Congress. I'm not saying he can do anything he wants, but I don't see any kind of strong check on the Republicans. Mathew has frequently extolled the moderate Republicans in Congress as evidence that the Party is not as far right as we think. But, these moderates are likely to be far more isolated and less influential now that moderate Democrats have been replaced by conservative Republicans.

Thinks typically go wrong in a second term and majorities usually don't accomplish as much as they expect, so who knows what the actual results will be. But it seems to me that centrist government is out the window for the foreseeable future. Rove has proven that the Republicans can win by basically appealing to the base and the South is so solidly Republican and so conservative, I don't see what could move the GOP toward the center short of some catastrophic economic disaster--and even then, they would probably tout more tax cuts as the answer. There is absolutely no chance that the president will change is stance on stem cell research, no chance that the administration will take global warming (or science for that matter) seriously, no chance of dealing with the deficit (especially since the administration seems to believe that we can spend and cut taxes at the same time). I'm not even going to talk about foreign policy.

I don't typically believe in "the sky is falling" type of rhetoric. The country will be ok. But it seems to me that every centrist should be concerned about a political system that is effectively controlled by one party with no constraints even if you agree with the agenda.

Presuming Zell Miller crosses over to vote with the Bush agenda, it will now require 6 or 7 moderates and fiscal hawks to stop Bush from just doing what he wants. That seems pretty far from centrist government being out the window.

There are plenty of fiscal hawks in Congress, and I'm counting on all of them to do the right thing and make sure we pay our bills.

Jamie--no. I would put the figure, given turnout, as more in the 30 million range this round. But it could have been a bit higher, and I honestly doubt it was much lower. 40 million would be maximum turnout for the group, everyone eligible voting.

As I said, DO NOT confuse Evangelicals (aka the "charismatic" Christian sects and churches) with the Religious Right--a favorite MAJOR error of the Left. Evangelicals number 85-90 million in America, close to 30% of the population, and split about 60/40 GOP/Dem. The RR is much smaller, and has been fading in influence in the GOP ever since the '94 elections (although it's not dead yet and probably never will be).

(The functional definition of "Mandate" as used in partisan arguments--what your side's guy has if he's elected. What the other side's guy can never have unless he starts agreeing with and implementing your side's agenda.)

How many extra seats in Congress do Republicans need to win to have a "mandate," as personified by the re-election of the President and expansion of Congressional majorities? Remember that Clinton claimed a mandate both times, without ever reaching a 50% majority in the popvote, and despite the Dems getting whacked in the '94 elections.

bk, you are literally correct in your definition of a mandate. I think Tully described what we're talking about as a political or de facto mandate.

Tully, I recognize the religious distinction you made. I agree that the RR has lost influence over the years. Maybe the news reports didn't make the distinction. But, I think we're in agreement that both sects came out heavily for the president.

No argument there, Jamie. They did indeed.

Some in the media make and understand the distinction. The radical left seems to have severe problems with it--just as the radical right has trouble distinguishing between anarcho-Marxists and Euro-socialists.

I think a lot of interest groups are going to take credit for the Bush victory (the RR among them), but I think it's a vast oversimplification that I hear espoused in the MSM that religious voters won the election for Bush. There may be some truth to it, but it's definitely not the whole story, and the GOP will get their collective asses handed to them in 2006 if they take that as the conventional wisdom.

I think Bush is smarter than that and will try to push through legislation with broad appeal. I think if nothing happens these two years, there will be general discontent with the status quo, so I believe he'll focus on things like tort reform and tax simplification, which will appeal to many moderates (or right-leaning moderates).

I agree with BK that it unlikely that the GOP or the Dems will do anything major to fix the Social Security problem; no one wants to make a hard choice. They may nibble at it with small privatization, but no one is going to talk about cutting benefits or raising taxes to stabilize it.