[clue-talk] it's over!

[David Rudder]

I always take the word "mandate" to be related to "mandatory" and to 
mean something along the lines of the voters saying "we elected you to 
do XYZ, so you really, really should do that".  The people primarily 
elected Obama to fix the economy.  Secondarily, they elected him to get 
us out of Iraq, change the tone of Washington, and because he's black 
and young.  I think it's pretty silly to think Obama's going to deliver 
on all this, but I think it's pretty clear that people want him to.  
He'd better at least deliver on the economy.

That's different from Pres. Bush's "political capital".  That line was 
total reality-distortion-field blather.  Bush thought he had the right 
to spend some of the political capital he thought he'd gained during the 
election to push his own agenda.  But, he barely won the election, and 
he went right out and spent millions on fancy parties, did away with 
habeas corpus, and then took a nice long vacation.  Shameful.

If Obama thinks he has any political capital to spend, he's crazier than 
Bush was.  He has a mandate, and he better get cracking.  Get us 100,000 
new jobs, bring the DOW over 14,000, bring our troops home without a 
massive disaster, and *then* he can party.  Political capital is earned 
during the execution of the job, not in the election.

-Dave

P.S.  I'm still chuckling over Carville's mandate comment.  Man-date.  
hehe. That guy looks like some sort of crazy alien, but he can really 
sling the zingers.

Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2001
>
> I didn't understand what it meant back then, and I still don't 
> understand what it means in reference to Obama.  The people elected a 
> President.  Is that a mandate that the President gets to do whatever 
> he wants for those people while disenfranchising the rest? I hope not.
>
> David Rudder wrote:
>> On Nov 5th, 2004, GWBush said:
>> "Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, 
>> political capital, and now I intend to spend it"
>> He didn't use the word "mandate", but a lot of Republicans were.
>> A funny quote: James Carville, a Democrat, was quoted as saying "The 
>> only person with a mandate is Jim Greevey".  HA!!!!  Mandate?!?!  
>> Man-date!!!
>>
>>
>> One big difference is that GWBush won 2004 on "character issues".  
>> Obama won on "policy issues".  The voters clearly voted for Obama 
>> because of his economic plan, and to a lesser extent his plan for 
>> Iraq.  He has a clear mandate on those issues.  GWBush had a clear 
>> mandate on abortion, gay marriage, etc., which he failed to address.
>>
>> Greg Knaddison - GVS wrote:
>>> But now both of you who have said basically the same thing, so...
>>>
>>> Am I looking at the wrong news sources?  As far as I can tell:
>>>
>>> Obama got 52% of the popular vote while  McCain got 46% of the popular
>>> vote. In 2004 Bush got 51% to Kerry's 48%.  We didn't call Bush's win
>>> in 2004 a mandate. Are 3 percentage points really that big of a
>>> difference?
>>>
>>> Certainly the popular news media is calling this a mandate, but that's
>>> no surprise.  From a critical perspective: is this a mandate?  And
>>> which numbers make it clearly so?
>>>
>>> Greg
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>
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