Be wary of anyone claiming an election mandate

The 2016 election was likely one of the most over-interpreted in US history – and this one will give it a run for its money. The votes are still being counted, the final tally unknown. We don’t know the details. We do know that Trump has already claimed a mandate, a characteristic overreach that is hardly without precedent. We also know that news media seem eager to write about a comeback, and while that may be accurate, it tells us very little that we don’t already know.

Others have been quick to observe that “Trump is who we are” – and that, too, is a truth that needs to be wrestled with. But “who we are” is not and never has been a single thing. The country has always had people pushing for change and justice, people putting all their efforts into maintaining unjust hierarchies, and all sorts of people in between. And this is where the attempt to construct a “mandate” for a single person chosen to lead a complex nation shows its impossibility. Whoever wins in a given election, the reasons are complicated, and there are lots of people who voted the other way.

As I wrote in 2018, elections are both complicated and simple. We are already seeing confident takes about what happened – the campaign, the Biden presidency, the misogyny and racism. And these can all be true. The fundamentals also explain what happened pretty well in the end – the post-pandemic status quo has been painful, and the public memory of the Trump presidency contains a lot of positive elements (mostly about the economy). As we wait to learn more, we can understand what happened yesterday as both very complicated and also very simple. Talking about mandates flattens public opinion, rather than lifting it up.

And as Robert Dahl warned us more than thirty years ago, assigning a popular mandate to the president carries specific and severe danger. It elevates the president above the Constitution and gives him a popular power he was never meant to have.

Rejecting such a proposition is especially key right now. Trump and his allies, particularly on the Supreme Court, have altered the Constitution as we once knew it. Notably, they’ve warped and weakened its constraint on the executive branch, building on many years of past administrations who have increased the power and cultural influence of the office. But as of today, the Constitution – not individuals or their personality movements – still rule. No election gives a leader more power than he is entitled to. Repeating mandate narratives is obeying in advance. Instead, our work is to remain attentive to the nuances of public opinion – including ideas that are anti-democratic, illiberal, and painful – and to find ways to resist the centralization of power.

It doesn’t end with language, but it can start there. Election mandates don’t exist, and we don’t have to go along with those who want to build them. We can build something else instead.