Sorry Republicans, It’s No Mandate

As we all know by now, acerbic Donald Trump came out ahead over Hillary Clinton to next occupy the office of the president. The win comes as no real surprise as one of the two was going to win and both were poor candidates, not what we need to heal our divided country.

Seeing now how the GOP claims to have a mandate and big win is most laughable as once again, we see the presidency won by electoral vote while coming in second in the popular vote.

I have no problem with that as that is the system our founders established. I do disagree with the ‘winner take all’ of 48 of our 50 states and believe each congressional district should have electors voting as did their district. But that is in the hands of the legislatures of each state.

Both the country and Republican Party remains bitterly divided and denying Trump the wholesale approval of his policy agenda he so often expressed on the campaign trail.

And while Republicans retained control of both the House and Senate, Democrats still have the filibuster as well as some strong, deeply entrenched politicians in office as well as Trump eagerly trashed several top Republicans during the campaign that also remain in office.

We’ll see how that works out over the next four years as this is not a reality TV show where Trump gets to just fire people he disagrees with.

We also must consider that Trump so far has amassed 59,704,886 votes. That is lower that Romney’s loss in 2012 with 60,933,504 votes and McCain’s loss in 2008 with 59,948,323 votes.

While Trump’s number may very well increase in the coming days as more straggling ballots come in and are counted, it is clear that many of the American people are not as supportive or embracing of Donald Trump’s agenda as being claimed.

Trump made a lot of claims and promises over the last year that should he moderate on, the fringe base he assembled will not be very happy.

But if he doesn’t moderate he will find he receives little cooperation from democrats or Republicans in Congress with more moderate views.

Both he and certain gas bags supporting him that believe it’s “a cold-blooded, mentally violent business” fail to realize the country was founded from the middle, compromise for what is best for all. We never have been an all or nothing nation and efforts of making us such has only served to bitterly divide us.

And, a house divided cannot stand.

So, while those gas bags and hotheads are gleefully looking forward to a wave of Trump’s magic wand to undo everything they disagree with, ultimately I doubt we will see a whole lot of changes coming.

They forget, as they fitfully try to compare Trump to Ronald Reagan, the latter realized early on the absolute must of compromise in governance as he said;

“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. ‘Compromise’ was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.”

Trump made some pretty tall claims of what he intends to do as president that some of his most ardent brown shirt’s bought into.

He may soon come to realize it won’t be like on a TV show and is much more difficult that he expected.

He got the gig, so we will all see how he handles it.

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