Mandate Indeed

I was going to drop a note about this, but Josh Marshall already said it and well:

there's this from his comments today: "We've worked hard and gained many new friends, and the result is now clear -- a record voter turnout and a broad, nationwide victory."

This is the touchstone and the sign. A 'broad, nationwide victory'? He must be kidding. Our system is majority rule. And 51% is a win. But he's claiming a mandate.

"A broad, nationwide victory"?

It would almost be comical if it weren't for the seriousness of what it portends. This election cut the nation in two. A single percentage point over 50% is not broad. A victory that carried no states in the Northeast, close to none in the Industrial midwest is not nationwide, and none on the west coast is not nationwide.

And yet he plans to use this narrow victory as though it were a broad mandate, starting right back with the same strategy that has already come near to tearing this country apart.

Cheney called it a mandate; Bush called it a broad nationwide victory. That close to 50% of the American people voted very different matters nothing to them. As Matt Walsh from US News and World Report on MSNBC just said, the president feels vindicated and now feels more latitude to proceed along the same path he has.

In a phrase, Oh my God. Not his God.