Does Obama's Election Victory Give Him A Mandate -- To Undo His Previous Mandate?

The Christian Science Monitor echoes the opinion of some that unlike Obama's first election victory -- Obama's 2012 election victory does not give him a mandate:

Election results 2012: Does Obama's historic victory give him a mandate?

An outcome that maintains the status quo in Washington guarantees Obama some important advantages. But the 2012 election results also foretell more gridlock, and the president, by not offering a path out of debt and deficit, lacks a clear mandate for action.

But on the other hand, there may be a mandate for Obama after all.

A conservative one!


Just One Minute notes that the message of the American people may very well be The Era Of Big Government Is Over:Could it be that, election results notwithstanding, conservatives are making progress with their small government argument? Deep in the Times reporting of exit polls I find this nugget:

Significantly, the electorate’s view of the government’s role in the economy has shifted away from Mr. Obama’s call for a kind of public-private partnership, and toward Mr. Romney’s hands-off, free-market platform.

In November 2008, when the country was floundering in the worst recession since the Depression, Election Day surveys of voters found that 51 percent of them wanted government to do more to intervene while 43 percent said it was doing too many things better left to businesses. Now, after four years of government activism, those numbers have flipped. [emphasis added]

Read the whole thing.

As JOM notes, it's a place to start -- for conservatives.

As for Obama, a successful campaign run with false accusations for the opposition by its very nature does not really lend itself to a mandate.

As The National Journal notes in explaining why Obama Victory Comes With No Mandate:

“The mandate is a myth,” said John Altman, associate professor of political science at York College of Pennsylvania. “But even if there was such a thing as a mandate, this clearly isn’t an election that would produce one.”

He pointed to Obama’s small margin of victory and the fact that U.S. voters are divided deeply by race, gender, spirituality, and party affiliation. You can’t claim to be carrying out the will of the people when the populous has little shared will. [emphasis added]

This is what Obama has to work with.
After all, to a certain degree the country's divisiveness is his doing.

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