Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Your humble correspondent, on December 30:

I suspect we will be hearing more Democrats echoing Dean's line, "Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous." Particularly if he becomes head of the DNC.

And arguments left unchallenged tend to take hold in the public mind, no matter how silly they are... After the 2000 election, the media embraced the conventional wisdom that America was a "50-50 nation." The results of the 2002 midterms suggested that the scales had begun to tip a bit, as a resurgent GOP retook the Senate after the Jeffords switch, added four House seats, and won a slew of highly contested races - senate seats in Missouri, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, governor's races in Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, etc.

But throughout 2004, the media stuck with the line, "We're an evenly-divided, 50-50 nation," even though the mid-terms and 2003 governor's races suggested we were starting to tip to a 51-49 or 52-48 nation.

When a bad idea is out there, you have to argue against it, no matter how silly it initially sounds... because otherwise, people start buying into it.

Christie Whitman, in her new book:

Whitman charges on Page 3 that Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection.

"The numbers show that while the president certainly did energize his political base, the red state/blue state map changed barely at all — suggesting that he had missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country," Whitman writes. "The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day, but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."

Shannen Coffin, writing in the Corner, today:

This is the second time this week I've heard the observation that Bush's margin of victory is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection. It fails to take into account the fact that a number of incumbent presidents have lost reelection, including Bush's father. How much of a criticism is it that the President's (non-plurality) election was closer than any that came before? This seems to be a particularly weak criticism and an ineffective attempt to undermine the President's mandate.

Some other mainstream media blog critic, today:

The Cornerites are taking a whack at Christie Todd Whitman's assertion that "Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection." Does this mean much? Well, it's better than being beaten, as some have remarked. But it is also indicative of the fact that the voters didn't weigh up the incumbent this time around and come to the conclusion that he fully deserved re-election. Most of the time, that's what they do with incumbents up for a second term. Remember Eisenhower's, Nixon's, Reagan's and Clinton's re-election margins? Bush didn't win a big majority; he remains much less popular than most re-elected presidents; if he's smart, he'll understand this.

See? See? You leave a bad idea out there, and before you know it, every mainstream-media voice who compares bloggers to Zarqawi is echoing it...

UPDATE: A few folks interpreted this post as some sort of shot at or criticism of Shannen Coffin. Uh, no. I included his comment to illustrate that he, too, senses that the "Bush's win is small potatoes" meme is spreading...

[Posted 01/03 05:37 PM]