The 9 most dangerous words from Trump’s victory speech
By Michael Jones
From the moment Kamala Harris earned enough support in July to become the presumptive Democratic nominee, the vice president and her top campaign aides said she would be the underdog in what would evolve into a coin-flip, margin-of-error election.
So, though not the outcome many Americans may have wanted, it’s not surprising that she lost the race given the political headwinds and despite running an incredible campaign. But few were expecting Harris to lose all seven swing states and hemorrhage support in solidly Democratic states like New York, Illinois, Minnesota and Virginia.
What else was unexpected? The extent of Donald Trump’s coattails.
There are three uncalled Senate races at press time, with Republican Dave McCormick leading Democrat Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) leading Sam Brown in Nevada and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) leading Kari Lake in Arizona. If this holds, Senate Republicans will have flipped four seats on their way to a 53-47 majority when most expectations had the GOP finishing 51–49.
Those two seats will weaken the influence of Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), viewed as two of the institution’s most moderate members who would have had the power to check any extreme far-right policies or nominees. Not so much with two extra votes in the pocket of whichever Republican wins the internal election next week to succeed Mitch McConnell as leader.
The House tells a similar story. Republicans are expected to narrowly hang on to their already-slim majority, which would be a terrible setback for Democrats who expected to flip the chamber and elect Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black speaker in US history. Even if Democrats somehow run the table on the remaining handful of uncalled races, House Republicans still held on to several of the seats Democrats coveted the most.
It’s this Trump-fueled congressional overperformance that motivated nine of the most dangerous words from Trump’s victory speech in Florida early Wednesday morning: ”America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
In political parlance, a mandate is the authority to carry out a policy under the assumption that it is broadly supported by the American people. The stronger the mandate, the less the majority party is expected to compromise.
If you’ve been reading this column and the fantastic work of the rest of the COURIER team leading up to the election, you’re aware of how hostile Trump’s agenda will be to Black and brown people, LGBTQ+ folks, women, people with disabilities and those from low-income communities. But now, Trump and his congressional allies will legitimize their harmful policies as the will of the people since they believe the results of the election created a mandate to fund Trump’s border wall, extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts and cuts to public education and social programs and open federal lands for oil drilling as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) outlined as the GOP’s legislative priorities in the first 100 days of Trump 2.0.
Trump’s perceived mandate extends beyond policy to personnel.
The president-elect has pledged to entrust conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with broad power to influence policy on everything from public health to agriculture. And while Trump could do this without nominating RFK Jr. to a Cabinet post that requires Senate confirmation, senators like Marco Rubio of Florida have already said Republicans will provide “great deference” to Trump when it comes to the people who populate his administration.
Democrats will have few levers of legislative power to push back against Trumpism and Project 2025 for at least the next two years. From conversations I’ve had over the past 48 hours, House Democrats plan to shape public opinion through viral moments in committees, floor speeches and press conferences as they’ve done these past two years in the minority. Senate Democrats can leverage the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to block major Republican legislation, but this won’t stop the GOP from advancing their two chief priorities—locking in tax cuts for wealthy people and big corporations and confirming conservative judges to the federal bench—since both just require the simple majority they now have.
The consensus from my talks with folks is to figure out how to regrow the power Democrats lost on Tuesday. There’s also worry that disappointment will lead to apathy, especially among young people and the diversity groups that make up the Democratic base and progressive movement. And while there are no quick fixes or easy ways to do it, as they say, the first step to solving a problem is to realize one exists in the first place.
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
