Obama: no mandate?
That's the conclusion of Bob Novak,a/k/a the Prince of Darkness, who writes:
[Obama] may have opened the door
to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither
received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large
congressional majorities.
To bolster his statement about Congress, Novak cites the Democrats' failure to capture a filibuster-proof, sixty-seat Senate majority, and their inability to oust Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. And to support his claim about Obama's nonexistent mandate, Novak cites...nothing at all.
This half-assed approach has elicited some pointed commentary on the Chicago Sun-Times Web site, including the following:
SHIELDS: Bob Novak, is 51 percent of the vote really a mandate?
BOB
NOVAK, CAPITAL GANG: Of course it is. It's a 3.5 million vote margin.
But the people who are saying that it isn't a mandate are the same
people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. (CNN, November 6,
2004)
And yes, he really did say it.
It's understandable that Novak might not be at the top of his game these days. Still, this is embarrassing stuff.
