These Republicans have no mandate

For a moment, imagine you didn’t fully expect Hillary Clinton to win. It’s the morning after the election. Your favorite morning show host tells you this:

Hillary Clinton got essentially as many votes as Barack Obama did in 2012 and won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes—winning by a margin greater than Kennedy’s successful race in 1960, Nixon’s in 1968 or Jimmy Carter’s in 1976, among others.

Democrats successfully reelected every Senate incumbent and even gained two seats. In fact, despite Republican control of the Senate, a majority of the members of the Senate didn’t even vote for Donald Trump.

Democrats actually gained six seats in the House despite facing gerrymandered maps and defying the historical norm of winning Congressional seats while losing the White House.

Now how would you feel? It doesn’t mean we won the White House and still doesn’t mean we did everything right. Far from it. There is a lot of justifiable blame and needed introspection. But it does mean we still represent the country and that’s a trust we can keep if we work at it.