There’s going to be a reckoning about the distance between what the swing voters who gave Trump this majority were voting for and what they’re about to get.

Summary

Donald Trump narrowly won the 2024 presidential election, securing the smallest popular vote margin for a victor in modern U.S. history, with just 1.6% over Kamala Harris.

Despite his win, Democrats performed unexpectedly well in down-ballot races, flipping Senate seats in swing states Trump carried and maintaining the House balance.

Republicans lack a clear mandate as Trump’s plans for deportations, ending birthright citizenship, political retribution, and tariffs clash with voters’ hopes for economic relief.

There’s likely to be backlash as voters realize the gap between what they wanted and what Trump plans to deliver.

  • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
    313·
    4 days ago

    I’m pretty Liberal but:

    Republicans lack a clear mandate

    Is utter bullshit. Republicans were handed very clear victories. Narrow, but clear. All western democracies sent a clear message, the current state of affairs is not good. Every western NATO country that had elections unseated the incumbent government.

    Trump’s plans for deportations, ending birthright citizenship, political retribution, and tariffs

    This is Trump’s fluff that the powers that be will entertain until they hold up more pressing priorities for the Republican party. My take on each one is:

    • Deportations — That’s going to happen. They’ve played the blame game too long on it. But it’s likely that the admin will find it’s Elian Gonzalez moment, wave that as victory and then put the whole thing in the rear view. As “the worse case” has serious economic effects that won’t fly high among the others in the party without some Congressional stomach for expanded H-2A, which detracts from more pressing concerns for them.
    • Ending birthright citizenship — That’s not happening. It is stupid that we’re even talking about this. Denaturalization, maybe, but nixing the 14th Amendment? No. The momentum isn’t there, people have bigger fish to fry.
    • Political Retribution — The people he’s targeting aren’t idiots and have access to a wide variety of legal counsel. Trump’s under the impression that it’ll cause them the same amount of headache he had in 2021 to 2024, but the reality is Trump picks shitty lawyers because only shitty lawyers want to represent Trump. Trump routinely doesn’t pay people and that’s made his legal issues magnify by 10,000 fold. Everyone else doesn’t have nearly the same headaches Trump has with legal affairs and it’s mostly because Trump stiffs people. Other people actually pay their lawyers.
    • Tariffs — I mean it’s likely to happen. It’ll be a FAFO moment for Trump for sure. But if it gets out of hand, his party might be able to reach concessions with Democrats to end any declaration of an emergency Trump tries to use to authorize the tariffs without Congress. It’s going to suck, and I will absolutely enjoy the schadenfreude that comes from it but not really enjoy the jacked up prices of things, but I mean things suck as is. So if it get twice as bad as it is now, I’ll only care about half as much as I do now. We all just refuse to address the crux of the issues with inflation so we’ll just keep on, keeping on. All of us are too busy blaming political people for inflation to really solve the issue, so maybe in another ten years or so everyone will finally chill the fuck out and we can work on the actual issues. But I’m not holding out hope.

    There’s likely to be backlash as voters realize the gap between what they wanted and what Trump plans to deliver.

    That’s almost a given. It’s one of the reasons Republicans are trying to get their ducks in a row for the 119th Congress. But with the narrow majority in the House, it will only take one or two asshats from the Freedom Caucus to fuck it up. And I absolutely feel that they’re going to do their usual asshattery at least once during the session. Mike Johnson isn’t some visionary, he does well to plan his lunch for the day. With all the to-dos the GOP has, it’s going to run into the too much water going down a narrow drain issue.

    It’s one of the reasons the transition team is trying to break things out into sole EO, requiring law, and direction. It’s also the reason Trump doesn’t want to deal with the 300 day window on his appointments. He wants them hitting the road right away. People want to think Trump wants recess to avoid hearings. Trump just wants recess appointments so that they can get to work on day one, avoiding the hearings is a nice bonus. They have a lot of things they want to get through and it only goes so fast and they’re pretty much betting on midterms being hard to them.

    But all that said, THIS:

    Republicans lack a clear mandate

    Is utter trash. They swept the fucking floor. Us Democrats need to take the L, look around, and figure a path for midterms to make a wide enough push in both chambers. But it ain’t going to happen just running around and yelling “TRUMP BAD! TRUMP BAD!” Democrats need to provide a clear policy agenda that is easy to articulate.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      142·
      4 days ago

      All good points, and in particular I dislike the about face this article takes. We’ve consistently pointed out the republicans losing the popular vote yet taking the presidency, but when they do actually win the popular vote and the presidency we’re like “well not really good enoigh…” This article is just blowing smoke up liberal asses. They lost, and they lost hard. The SCOTUS, congress, and the presidency are all captured. The damage that can be done is pretty much unlimited.

      “Mandate” is also a ridiculous term. Nobody has won by a landslide to indicate a mandate.

      This whole article is sour grapes and glosses over the reality of the situation while exaggerating victories.