election victory + demographics = mandate
outside the shrub mindset, a narrow victory isn't in and of itself muhc of a mandate.
we won the white house by a few percent and by a relatively small number of electoral votes.
we picked up a few house and senate seats.
a clear victory across the board, but hardly a compelling mandate in and of itself.
what makes it a compelling mandate is that the democraphics favor democrats going forward.
more immigrants, more latinos, red states becoming purple, purple states becoming blue.
this means that if the republican party fails to adapt, this election is a harbinger of things to come.
incremental gains by democrats, incremental losses by republicans.
they can double down on their ideology and their racism for 2014, being as mid-terms bring out the faithful, and a two-term president's party usually does lousy in the second mid-term elections.
but by 2016, they need to change or go out in a blaze of twisted glory.
meaning that the shift to the right over the last 30 years or so may very well be at an end, and we may see the start of a long shift back to sanity.
now THAT's a mandate.