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

Content: He has promised to repeal Obamacare, but unlike Paul Ryan, he has a lot less invested in the details of the law’s repeal and what might replace it. He will face some major blowback from a significant chunk of his base if he picks a Supreme Court nominee who is not on his much-touted shortlist; according to exit polls, Trump won by 15 points among the 21 percent of voters who said the Supreme Court was “the most important factor” in their vote, lost 48–47 among the 48 percent of voters who said it was “an important factor,” and lost by twelve points among the rest of the electorate. All that said, a lot of the key working-class Trump voters in the Rust Belt care more about economic prosperity than about any particular policy, so Trump’s fate will be tied even more than most presidents’ to his perceived handling of the economy. What that means in terms of the mandate his supporters have given him is that he should focus on policies that are likely to deliver results. Advertisement
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.