Donald Trump's Margin Size Is Almost As Tiny As His Mandate
The voters elected him to Do A Groceries. That's it.
There’s something Donald Trump needs to know about the crowd size that gave him a popular vote win over Kamala Harris, and contributed to his 2024 election win: It’s tiny. It’s like the smallest mandate ever. People get up and leave in the middle of his mandate, because they’re bored with it. His mandate is smaller than his hands. His popular vote win is smaller than the number of people who will show up to his next poorly attended inauguration.
It’s so small we can’t even see it, quite frankly.
But wait! Haven’t the pundits all been saying this was a landslide? Isn’t Trump’s victory so big that you can see it from space, which means voters have given him absolute power to become literally Hitler?
Eh, not so much. He basically has a mandate to fix people’s groceries, and he’s not gonna do that, because he’s a moron.
California is still counting votes, but let’s look at what’s happened to the popular vote. Here’s Harry Enten from CNN:
That says:
Trump's mandate? It's very shallow. Trump's now under 50% in the popular vote. His margin ranks 44 of 51 since 1824. Weak coattails: 4 Dems won for Senate in states Trump won. (It was 0 in 2016 & 2020.) The GOP is on track for smallest House majority since there were 50 states.
Under 50 percent. Couldn’t even bring Senate races along with him. Speaker Mike Johnson’s “majority” will be even more ineffectual and brokedick than ever.
And all because Donald Trump was born, womp womp.
Now look, Trump did win the popular vote this time, just like Joe Biden did in 2020 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. It’s just that Joe Biden won it by 4.4 percent and Hillary Clinton won it by two percent and Trump is at this point winning it by less than that. (About 1.7 percent.)
The current numbers, per Cook:
Wow. If Trump is under 50 percent, that means the majority of people who voted in the 2024 presidential election didn’t vote for Trump. That’s rough. And California’s not done yet. Could get tighter for him.
(And imagine the 89 million people who didn’t vote at all, which means they also didn’t vote for Trump. Sounds to us like most people in this country either hate Trump or are thoroughly indifferent to and unimpressed by him.)
But look, we know, it’s impressive for a Republican to win the popular vote at all. The last time that happened it was 2004 and George W. Bush won it by 2.4 percent, which is still significantly larger than Trump’s little weeny margin. Before that it was 1988.
None of this is intended to take away from the fact of Trump’s victory. It happened. It’s just that when you look at everything in context, it suggests that maybe the American electorate did not resoundingly decide that it was on board with Trump’s mass deportations and recess-appointing a Cabinet full of pedophiles and buffoons and letting Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy shock doctrine the US economy in order to inflict mass pain on American citizens and letting RFK Jr. replace the fluoride in the water with GHB.
You know, especially when you consider that Google searches for things like “What is a tariff?” and “Wait, who is the late great Hannibal Lecter again?” reportedly spiked after the election, suggesting that perhaps many of the people who voted for Trump are profound fucking morons who weren’t quite tuned in.
The top issue for Trump voters was “economy.” In this first post-COVID election, where voters in all developed countries voted for whichever party was not the incumbent party — regardless of whether that meant going left or right — people were basically reacting to the feeling that everything isn’t fixed yet after the pandemic, and giving the reins to somebody different, even if that “somebody different” in this case was Stupid Hitler. They weren’t asking him to be Stupid Hitler. They were asking him to fix “economy.” (Which actually is excellent, but voters don’t understand that, and perception is what counts here.)
Donald Trump has a mandate to Do A Groceries. That’s it.
As Trump himself explained before the election:
TRUMP: I have more complaints on grocery, the word “grocery,” you know, it’s a sort of simple word, but it sorta means like everything you eat, the stomach is speaking, it always does.
Yes.
And as Trump himself explained after the election, at the America First Policy Institute Gala at Mar-a-Lago the other night (start at 7:05 if the queueing doesn’t work):
TRUMP: I heard something that was very interesting, the word “grocery,” it’s sort of such a strange and simple, nice word, you know, “I’m going out for groceries today!”
Yes.
You’ll want to keep watching in that clip, because soon after Trump tells the story of “the woman and the three apples,” which is related to the strange and simple word “grocery.”
The American people elected Trump — barely, it turns out — to Do A Groceries. Not to let his Director of National Intelligence send Five Eyes intelligence to the Kremlin, or to let his AG use the DOJ Mastercard to Venmo teenage girls.
And sadly, because Trump is a fucking moron whose economic ideas were preserved in bronze in the 1890s, his policies won’t even Do A Groceries. His idiot-ass tariffs would RAISE PRICES on electronics and clothes and toys and groceries, and his mass deportations — which he wants to declare a national emergency and use the military to start on day one — will, besides being stupid and evil, sharply raise the prices of groceries.
But hey, it’s Fuck Around And Find Out What You Voted For season for Trump supporters, and they’re bout ‘ta.
[video via Republicans Against Trump]
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We have reached Peak Cletus Safari, y’all. The New York By God Times today decided to move an article that attempted to explain why Pennsylvania Latinos broke for Trump.
Overall, it’s a masterclass of willful self-delusion, but there was one spectacular standout.
Young guy, not quite 30, has a steady job but recently had to move back in with his mother and retaliated by voting for Trump, who this young fellow believes will make the economy better.
This dolt works as a financial adviser. It’s almost too perfect.
[it suggests that maybe the American electorate did not resoundingly decide that it was on board with Trump’s mass deportations and recess-appointing a Cabinet full of pedophiles and buffoons and letting Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy shock doctrine the US economy in order to inflict mass pain on American citizens and letting RFK Jr. replace the fluoride in the water with GHB.]
Except that ALL PART OF THE MOTHERFUCKING PACKAGE ALONG WITH SAYING RAPE IS COOL, RACISM IS COOL, WANTING CONCENTRATION CAMPS, AND HATING LGBTQ PEOPLE, AND SCIENCE AND MAYBE MOTHERFUCKERS SHOULD ACTUALLY GOOGLE GODDAMNED QUESTIONS BEFORE THEY FUCK IT ALL UP AND SENTENCE THE ENTIRE WORLD TO A GREATEST DEPRESSION AND A FUCKING DARK AGE THAT WILL MAKE US ALL LONG FOR THE WORLD OF THE BLACK FUCKING PLAGUE. FUCK.