Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

What mandate? Trump did not secure a large enough victory for anyone to reasonably claim he was handed a mandate. Did the Republicans ever respect Biden's "mandate" on his issues, with a similar EV victory and a huge popular vote victory? Hell, Trump didn't even get half the popular vote.

Nor do single issues get mandates even when a president does have an overwhelming victory. Voters do not select specific issues to vote on, they vote for a person based on their overall platform.

Trump also talked about how he was going to focus on deporting violent criminals. And now that that is no longer the case, the goalpost is being moved to... any crimes. And now again to anyone that has outstanding charges, but no conviction. And now it's hey, they're here illegally, so that's a crime, right! We'll have to ignore the fact that a good chunk of those being deported also entered using a legal process that puts them in limbo - ICE has been grabbing people showing up at their immigration court cases.

I'd call it the presidential victory mandate. I guess he shouldn't actually do what he promised as the victory wasn't large enough? "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

He’s not a king to do whatever he promised as is, he’s bound by laws and constitution (which are passed by congress).

Also as you were corrected there is constant goalpost moving in terms of whom exactly should be deported and how.

If you’re really interested in public opinion people don’t support ICE and especially how do they do what they do.

This country isn't one that respects mandates over the laws, and even within the laws there are a lot of mechanisms that are meant to force the building of consensus between both parties (or rather, across congress as a whole, since they didn't assume a two party system). These have fallen apart to a significant degree with the rise of unitary executive power over the past half century, but that obviously was outside of the framers' intent.

What people call a mandate has been when a position actually has been popular enough that it could be acted on quickly without opposition. The very fact that there is so much opposition to this, that the polling is so bad, that the protests are so widespread, that the negative feedback is so frequent even within the Republican party quite explicitly shows that there is no mandate here.

But again: If Trump's victory was enough to secure a mandate, why didn't a similar EV victory and significantly larger popular vote victory secure one for Biden? Why would a mandate based on deporting violent criminals apply to people without convictions? To people showing up at their court cases as they go through a legal process where they did follow all the rules?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com