Listen to President Donald Trump and his spokespeople long enough, and you’ll hear them refer to the “mandate” he has been given by the American people to disrupt the federal government.
In an unprecedented speech at the Justice Department last week, Trump declared that voters have “given us a mandate” for “a far-reaching investigation … into the corruption of our system” by Democrats. He has also asserted that his “massive landslide victory” granted him a “historic mandate” to reshape policy “with respect to taxation, federal social spending, immigration, energy production, family values, defense, and other areas.”
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However, Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, writing in Monday’s New York Times, suggested that Trump’s perception of his mandate may not align with public sentiment. She noted that Trump “seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers.
He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term… he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe.”
Yet, Anderson’s analysis pointed to a different public priority. “As I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it.” At the top of their concerns: “There is increasing evidence in public opinion data that Americans are growing impatient to get the primary thing they feel they were promised: a more stable economy where the cost of living is more affordable,” Anderson wrote.
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She also warned that presidents have historically misinterpreted their mandates, “seeing what they want to see rather than what the voters have plainly told them.” “The best argument for Mr. Trump’s belief that he was elected with a broad mandate to bring about aggressive change is that he never pretended he’d do otherwise,” Anderson noted.
In other words, “Voters had plenty of foreknowledge of what Mr. Trump might do in a second term, and they voted for him anyway.” As Trump pushes forward with his policy initiatives, the debate over whether his agenda truly aligns with voters’ priorities continues to intensify.
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