Comment by cthalupa

This country isn't one that respects mandates over the laws, and even within the laws there are a lot of mechanisms that are meant to force the building of consensus between both parties (or rather, across congress as a whole, since they didn't assume a two party system). These have fallen apart to a significant degree with the rise of unitary executive power over the past half century, but that obviously was outside of the framers' intent.

What people call a mandate has been when a position actually has been popular enough that it could be acted on quickly without opposition. The very fact that there is so much opposition to this, that the polling is so bad, that the protests are so widespread, that the negative feedback is so frequent even within the Republican party quite explicitly shows that there is no mandate here.

But again: If Trump's victory was enough to secure a mandate, why didn't a similar EV victory and significantly larger popular vote victory secure one for Biden? Why would a mandate based on deporting violent criminals apply to people without convictions? To people showing up at their court cases as they go through a legal process where they did follow all the rules?