Simple arithmetic and mandates, another contest, and the 2008 ticket

You hear it all the time: Bush enters his second term with the largest popular vote ever recorded in presidential elections. Mandate! – says our man of great humility. Mandate! – repeat the pundits (in horror or in joy, depending on their leanings). Okay, but we know who has the second largest number of votes ever:

GWB (04): 59,459,765
Kerry (04): 55, 949,407

Followed by:

Reagan (84): 54,455,075
Gore (00): 50,999,897
GWB (00): 50,456,002
the other Bush (88): 48,882,808
Clinton (96): 47,402,357
Nixon (72): 46,740,323
Clinton (92): 44,908,254
Reagan (80) 43,901,812

Note that in addition to the 55,949,407 Kerry supporters, more than 75,000,000 did not feel compelled to demonstrate their support for a GWB Mandate (meaning, more than 40% of eligible voters did not vote). Thus the *Mandate* effectively comes from about 30% of Americans.

The other interesting statistic is that, aside from the 2000 election (which Bush *won* by just 5 votes in the Electoral College), it was the smallest margin of victory won in the Electoral College since 1916, when Woodrow Wilson beat Charles Evans Hughes by 23 votes, 277 to 254.

Mandate indeed! With this in mind, I’ll post another contest, call it the “Hubris Contest” (it originated in my neighborhood, but people are feeling stumped). Here it is: Come up with a word that would describe the way over-the-top, overarching pride Dubya now has.

Commentators say Edwards is in an excellent position to jump into the race again in 08. And who on the Republican ticket? On the other side of the ocean, where people are trying to understand how we pick our leaders, Jeb and Jenna have both been mentioned.