Coinciding with growing resistance to President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees is an acknowledgment that, despite claims from Trump and his closest allies, the election "landslide" he brags beat Vice President Kamala Harris wasn't as big as he says.
According to a report from the New York Times' Peter Baker, as the last votes are tabulated, Trump's popular vote lead over his opponent shrivels. But that hasn't kept the Trump camp from using "landslide" claims to say voters overwhelmingly cleared him to pursue all of his policies.
Now, with the withdrawal of ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, the mirage of a "mandate" is disappearing — and it's giving lawmakers more leeway to criticize, the Times reported.
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According to the report, "With some votes still being counted, the tally used by The New York Times showed Mr. Trump winning the popular vote with 49.997 percent as of Thursday night, and he appears likely to fall below that once the final results are in — meaning he would not capture a majority."
That led Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor at UCLA to quip, "If the definition of landslide is you win both the popular vote and Electoral College vote, that’s a new definition,” before predicting, "I would not classify this outcome as a landslide that turns into evidence of desire for a huge shift of direction or policy.”
According to Baker, "Mr. Trump had limited coattails this month. With some races yet to be called, Republicans were on track to keep almost exactly the same narrow majority in the House that they already had. The party picked up four seats in the Senate, enough to take control, a major shift that will benefit Mr. Trump. But even then, in the places where Mr. Trump campaigned the most, he failed to bring Republicans along with him in four of five battleground states with Senate races."
That led former White House adviser Doug Sosnik to suggest, "This election was more of a repudiation of Biden and the Democrats than it was a vote for Trump. A normal Republican candidate should have picked up at least eight Senate and 30-plus House seats given that the incumbent Democratic president had a job approval in the 30s with 70 percent of voters believing that the country was headed in the wrong direction.”
Yale Law School Professor claimed Trump has a mandate, but it only goes so far.
“Trump can legitimately claim a mandate from the American people for his effort to make America great again,” he said. "But given his razor-thin majorities in Congress, he will fail to gain the support of Republicans from swing districts who will predictably fear defeat in the midterm elections if they enact legislation destroying Obamacare or increasing tariffs in ways that will impose shattering burdens on millions of voters.”
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