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Blogger Scott Clayton doesn't think much of my reaction of Howard Dean's dismissal of Bush's mandate. To review, in Rolling Stone, Dean said:

Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous.

I thought Dean’s assessment was wrongheaded in a multitude of ways.

Clayton’s reaction to Bush having the highest percentage of the vote of any presidential candidate since 1988: “K, great, but so what? I guess Bush should be proud of his ability to unite the nation against John Kerry on a scale not seen since 1988. But this point is akin to saying that Freddy v. Jason was the best Freddy movie in years because he hadn't appeared in a slasher flick since 1994. While technically it’s true, both the movie and Bush's mandate arguments are both weak and full of crap.” Let’s refer to this argument as Objection One.

I suggested that Dean ought to not scoff at 51 percent of the vote nationwide, since he has yet to win anything outside of Vermont. Clayton’s response:

Okay, if I guy who actually ran in a primary has no place to comment on a "mandate" because he never won, then where does Jim Geraghty get off claiming he knows more since, as far as I know, Geraghty has yet to even run for President in the first place?

Let’s call that one Objection Two.

I wrote “That if 51 percent isn't a mandate, then no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has had a mandate?”

Clayton contends, “I’m not sure where there are arguments that any Democrat since Johnson has had a mandate at this point.” Objection Three.

I continued: “That Bush's 59.1 million votes was the highest total for a presidential candidate in American history? That Bush was the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to win re-election while adding to his party's majorities in the House and Senate?”

Clayton was not persuaded by these arguments, concluding, “That more people voted against Bush that any other President in history? That due to some Constitutionally questionable shenanigans in Texas the Republicans won House seats?” Objections Four and Five.

He concludes, “If a Democrat wins the White House with 51% of the vote, does that mean Republicans and those at the National Review like Geraghty will fall in line with that Democratic President's view that he has a mandate?”

Response to Objection One: If one doesn’t think four presidential races since 1988 represent enough opportunities for the Democrats to meet the 51 percent threshold, we can go back further. As I stated in the original post, one has to go back to 1964 to find a presidential campaign in which the Democratic candidate received a higher percentage than Bush’s 51 percent this year. Since LBJ beat Goldwater, the Democrats have gone 0-for-10 in aiming to beat that threshold, even while winning the presidency in 1976, 1992 and 1996. One can say that the Bush majority of this year compares to the quality of a low-grade horror sequel. But the Clinton and Carter majorities would be, under this metaphor, some lower-grade film work, perhaps “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Dean and Clayton dismiss an achievement that their party (presuming Clayton’s a Dem) have not achieved in my lifetime.

Response to Objection Two: Again, it is not merely that Howard Dean, winner of the 2004 Vermont presidential primary (and that’s about it), has chosen to dismiss Bush’s percentage win as small potatoes. It is that no one on the Democratic side has demonstrated an ability to do this in four decades, even the man widely regarded as one of, if not the, greatest political communicator of his generation, Bill Clinton.

To turn around his question to me, if 51 percent is no big deal, must a President Hillary Clinton (or some other Democrat) win by at least 52 percent in 2008 before her party will argue she has a “mandate”?

Response to Objection Three: Ahem. How about these guys? Time magazine, Nov. 16, 1992, Clinton‘s mug with “MANDATE FOR CHANGE” in big letters across the cover? (Recall this is regarding a victory in which Clinton won 43 percent of the popular vote while winning by substantially more in the Electoral College.)

Response to Objection Four: “More people voted against Bush that any other President in history.” And for that, Americans Coming Together, the Media Fund, and the Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts deserve some attaboys. But that’s not the measuring stick for winning. The metric for victory is 270 in the Electoral College.

Gaining more votes than ever before while coming in second is like a football team gaining more yards than their opponent while scoring fewer points. Yardage is nice to have, but at the end of the day, it's about who's got the bigger number on the scoreboard.

Response to Objection Five: “Republican House seat gains can be attributed entirely to constitutionally-questionable shenanigans.” I don’t buy this argument, but even if one conceded it, the Democrats failed to gain House seats against a reelected incumbent president, which is usually poison for the party’s congressional delegation.

In 1996, Bill Clinton returned to office with 51 fewer House Democrats than 1992. In 1984, Reagan returned to office with 10 fewer House Republicans than 1980. In 1972, Nixon had the exact same number of House Republicans as 1968. In 1956, Eisenhower returned to office with 20 fewer House Republicans than 1952. By historical standards, 2004 should have been a good year for House Democrats, and yet they return to the Hill in January with a smaller caucus. And this is with “more people voting against Bush than any other president in history.”

While I’m not moved by many of these responses, let’s recognize that perhaps the term “mandate” could use a clearer definition. He wonders if Republicans, National Review, or I would concede that Democratic president who won with 51 percent has a mandate.

Let’s think back to 1998. Republicans head into the mid-term elections after a good nine months of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and were convinced they were going to roll up some big wins against the Democrats, weighed down by the president’s appalling behavior.

Didn’t turn out that way, obviously. The GOP expected big gains but lost five House seats, lost a net of one governorship and broke even in the Senate. There was no way to interpret those results as an endorsement of impeachment proceedings against the president. While the House voted to impeach Clinton, and the Senate went through the motions of the proceedings, the possibility of Clinton being removed from office ended on Election Night.

Like it or not, the anti-impeachment forces scored a mandate, and more than a few Republicans noticed. Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Jim Jeffords of Vermont voted against both counts, and, of course, Arlen “Angus” MacSpecter cited Scottish law and voted “not proven.” Several other GOP senators like John McCain voted against one of the impeachment articles.

When does the other guy have a mandate? We can quibble over just what percentage marks the threshold, but ultimately, he’s got one when you don’t have the votes to beat him.

I may not like the agenda of a future President Hillary or President Dean who wins 51 percent, but if they’ve won the electoral college, it’s tough for me to deny that they’ve won a mandate. (Or at least more of a mandate than the opposition did.) As we saw, in 1992 Clinton claimed a mandate with 43 percent and few objected.

Also note we often hear Dean bragging that “our campaign brought hundreds of thousands of new people, not all of them were Democrats, into the fold… especially young people… We raised more money than any other candidate because we taught people how to run grassroots. Since that time, we've had an organization, Democracy for America, which has raised even more grassroots money and pumped into the local races and we've had some successes in so-called red states.”

Dean seems to be suggested he’s earned a mandate through his fundraising and grassroots activism, while dismissing Bush’s accomplishment of merely winning more votes.

One other observation - in the race for DNC chair, we see many Democrats saying again and again, “We know the American people agree with us on the issues.” They conclude this, one presumes, from poll numbers. But when Americans actually go into the voting booth, for some reason they keep giving the Republicans more votes.

To listen to some Democrats, their party wins mandates all the time - just not at the ballot box.

[Posted 12/29 05:49 PM]