There's no such thing as an election "mandate"

The question, our Democratic friends insist, is one of “mandate,” one of the most popular and stupid words in the American political lexicon.

According to this line of thinking, the fact that Trump won but did not win lots and lots of votes in highly populous Democratic states such as California where he did not campaign very much means that he should give Democrats what they want instead of trying to get what he wants. This is, of course, a one-way street: American voters have entrusted Republicans with the management of 68 of the nation’s 99 legislative chambers, 34 of its 50 governorships, a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and the mayoralty of Miami, but Democrats still believe that their elected officials, hated and despised and spurned as they may be in that vast sea of electoral-map red dividing Oakland from Trenton, should keep trying to get what they want, secondary considerations be damned. There is something to be said for the argument that if you won your election you should fight like hell to do what you told the voters you were going to do; Democrats just can’t quite see extending this thinking to Trump, who won the biggest and most hotly contested and most-talked-about election.

This is all part of what I call the non-negotiability of progressive victories. You see this all the time: When it comes to Supreme Court precedents, the Democrats demand 100 percent deference to standing decisions in, e.g., Roe v. Wade, and are 100 percent powerless to act against the tide of capital-H History when it comes to overturning decisions they don’t like or discovering new constitutional rights that enshrine progressive political preferences. There’s no principle in question: They just want the Court to give them what they want.

The non-negotiability of progressive victories is going to be a large factor in Senator Chuck Schumer’s resistance to various Trump cabinet picks. The sophistry already has begun, with Democrats arguing that no one can lead the Department of Education or the EPA or Department of Labor unless he signs off on the progressive version of what that agency should do. So if you think that the present federal role in education is excessive and ought to be reduced, or that the EPA’s boot is a little too heavy on the neck of American industry, or that a federal court was right to put the brakes on the Obama administration’s daffy overtime rules, then you cannot lead the Department of Education, the EPA, or the Department of Labor. Which is to say, these departments exist, in the progressive view, only to pursue progressive policies.