Title: Donald Trump & GOP Congress: 2016 Election Mandates | National Review
Headings: Does Donald Trump Have a Mandate?
Does Donald Trump Have a Mandate?
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Three Kinds of Presidential Mandates
The People’s House
The Senate of the Republic

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The third kind of mandate is the one we usually mean when we use the term: a legislative mandate. A president can be said to have this kind of mandate when his popular support is such that other people in the political system feel compelled to help him do things that he wants to do, and that they don’t. The strength of a newly elected or reelected president’s legislative mandate can be measured by how afraid senators and representatives are that their constituents will punish them for opposing him. That kind of fear becomes even more important as bipartisan norms of comity continue to degrade at a rapid pace. A legislative mandate is irrelevant if you have enough votes to pass things through Congress just with the support of people who already agree with you. Ronald Reagan needed, and had, a mandate on economic and budget issues in 1981, just as FDR did in 1932: While he had the votes of people who believed in Reaganomics, a fair number of wavering Democrats went along with Reagan, across party lines, because they felt the voters wanted them to. ( In one famous anecdote, Reagan got a Pennsylvania Democrat to vote for his tax-cut plan by calling into a radio show and asking for his support live on the air.) Barack Obama had a similar mandate in 2009, but never really tested its limits on Republicans — he had the votes of his own party to do whatever he wanted, so he was able to pass the stimulus with the support of only three Republican senators and no Republicans in the House, and to pass Obamacare without any GOP support whatsoever.