While it'll be excruciating to live with him in our face for the next four years, he'd better fail to use the word "mandate."
 
For one, he only won the electoral college by winning Ohio, by 130,000 votes out of 5.5 million cast there (without counting the provisional ballots or the people who just COULDN'T make themselves stand in line in the rain for 8 hours to vote for the lesser of two evils).  

And then there's his 3 and a half million popular vote margin, which is accounted for by just 5 states (Texas accounts for nearly half).  He won:

Texas by 1,600,000

Alabama by 500,000

Georgia by 500,000

Indiana by 500,000

Oklahoma by 400,000


Just those 5 above account for his whole margin, so the rest had equal Kerry margins on the other side:

Utah by 400,000

Kansas by 300,000

Kentucky by 300,000

Nebraska, by 250,000

AND, he only won states like Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas, West Virginia by less than a 100,000, which is a thin line between it having gone completely the other way.
 
So he needs to not think he has a "mandate."  Because where I live, he does not.




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