The Incredible Shrinking Trump Mandate

History Will See This Election as an Historic Squeaker

I don’t want to take anything away from Trump’s victory. He won the election. As far as we can tell he won it fair and square. Many—including me—did not think he would win the popular vote. But he did. And he took back control of the Senate. And he maintained control of the House.

The win infused Trump and his supporters with energy and the sense that they had won a resounding mandate. Trump even immediately called his workshops in China and immediately got them working on presidential merch—including a “victory” watch. Buy a piece of history, he urges on the ads where he is hawking the watches.

His rhetoric and his actions have all suggested he believes he won big. No doubt that’s because a.) he always believes he wins big (even when he loses) and b.) he got what he really wanted from this election from the get go. The legal cases against him were dropped. He is not going to jail. And on top of that, he got a degree of validation that I am not even sure he believed he was going to get.

Unfortunately for our 47th president it probably is not going to get any better than this.

Because his delusions about the size of his win are akin to his other seeming delusions about size.

He is barreling into this presidency as though there is no force big enough to stop him, as though he were king of the world. Some of his cabinet appointments have told us that he believes this. So too have some of his other behaviors—appointing friends, family members, other convicts, to top jobs…promising bold measures that no administration in the past has been able to achieve…signaling to the world that he would be bound by no ethical norms. (Setting up the next White House to be a kind of big store where he sells off bits and pieces of America or influence to the highest bidder. His son Eric’s announcement that the Trump organization would be active internationally throughout his father’s second term in office says, “We’re open to business to foreign interests who are inclined to direct a little money Trump’s way in exchange for this or that.”

He has been bold. He has been brash. Even for Trump.

A Case of Premature Inauguration

Heck, he seems to have assumed the presidency already even though his inauguration is still five or six weeks away. He’s sending emissaries out into the world. He’s announcing international policies on trade. He’s got his advisors going up to the Hill to work on his budget priorities. The whole old-fashioned notion that we have one president at the time has gone right out the window. (And President Biden has been silent about this. In fact, he has maintained a pretty low profile since the election.)

But he reality is creeping up on the court of King Donald I.

The GOP Senate’s expression of displeasure with the appointment of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General was a signal that Trump would not get his way with everything. In fact, it was the first big reminder that although the GOP controls the Senate, they only do so by a few votes. Four or five Republicans object to something and it will not happen. That factor has already has led to Trump’s DEA nominee to drop his candidacy. And it seems likely to soon claim Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee. After that, it may also stop the nominations of Kash Patel to the FBI and Tulsi Gabbard to be DNI.

It will likely be a historic string of set backs for the new administration. Perhaps in a year or two it will be forgotten. But what will remain is the sense that Trump cannot dictate outcomes. The Senate…which also rejected his plea for recess appointments and his idea that there would no background checks on his nominees…rejected these ideas without a vote, just with a few Senators indicating to their leadership and the press that they opposed these ideas…has asserted to a degree their role as a separate but equal branch of government. They may give Trump much of what he wants. But they will not give him everything and he and his team now recognize that.

The narrowness of Trump’s win however will soon be even more apparent in the House of Representatives. There, the GOP nominally has a five vote edge. But three of those members will be leaving (two to join the administration, one, Gaetz, by not assuming his seat). That makes the GOP margin for the next few months just 1 vote. That means that every proposal that the Trump Administration makes for legislation will need the GOP to be unanimous. Thinking back over the past few years we know how rarely that happens. And when you think of the top items on Trump’s agenda—like big budget cuts—it is hard to imagine any of them that will not hit some district so hard that a Republican member will oppose it and demand a change.

While Jesus may have said that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, I can think of two rich men (the DOGE doges) who will find it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get big sweeping budget cuts through a House of Representatives in which the GOP only has a one vote margin.

And even should more Republicans replace those who are vacating the empty seats, a three person or four person margin is not much better. (What’s more the clock is ticking. The midterms are now 23 months away. Look at recent midterm elections and the odds are against the GOP maintaining their majority beyond that. So, what does that give them…maybe 20 or 18 months with a majority as big as three or four votes? It’s going to be very hard to get much done in that environment.

It’s made even more complicated because every big budget cut hurts some special interest group or some big business or big GOP donor who is going to push back. Congresspeople running for reelection will be hyper sensitive to this.

So, while the month since the election has been a pretty heady one for Trump, it may be remembered as a brief moment in which his victory seemed big whereas the results of the four years to follow—which are likely to include getting much less done than he wants and when he does get things done to achieve them on a much smaller scale—may send a message that unfortunately for Trump and the GOP was not big enough.

Their inability to do much will not sit well with voters who are likely to also receive multiple reminders that a.) Trump is not a great manager, b.) some of his nominees that do get through will be terribly underqualified for their jobs, c.) some of his big initiatives will fizzle because of court cases or push back from our allies or markets and therefore d.) maybe they’d be better off with a leadership change in 2028. (Sorry, J.D., it’s just true.)

If all that happens as I expect it will…then in the future historians will not write of Trump’s massive 2024 win but rather they will observe that it was too narrow for him to do much of what he wanted to do and that ultimately the term will prove to be a source of frustration and difficulty for the GOP going forward.

Wishful thinking? We shall see. But the whereas politicians in DC often dissemble, arithmetic does not lie. And the arithmetic of DC politics over the next few years will be a headache for Trump…as it is is already proving to be.