>A republican candidate narrowly won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, a metric that has no value in our system of government.

I can't tell whether you're trying to make a nitpicky point about how the president is elected, or you're trying to claim the concept of political legitimacy doesn't exist.

Political legitimacy isn't static, but it is primarily demarcated by hard numbers in our system. And going by the hard numbers - the ones actually referenced in binding documents - the Republican Party currently has one of the weakest grasps on power of any ruling party in our country's modern history. A rational administration would appreciate that fact and govern accordingly.

Political legitimacy exists.

Overstating one’s narrow win as a giant mandate does too.

>Overstating one’s narrow win as a giant mandate does too.

The "giant" part is inserted entirely by you. The point is that he's elected president, and the usual excuse about the popular vote doesn't apply.

No, it isn’t inserted by me.

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/16/g-s1-38003/trump-mandate-pres...

> "America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," he said.

Which given the maps at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidentia... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidentia... is just a dumb claim.

I think they're claiming that the popular vote has no real relationship to political legitimacy in the US, which is true, because the electoral college/FPTP system is explicitly designed to render the popular vote essentially meaningless through layers of abstraction and gatekeeping. It's only really useful for propaganda, and not even that useful - Republicans claimed a sweeping mandate from the masses even in 2016 when millions more people voted for Hillary Clinton.