By the following logic, no one has ever had a mandate.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots

Only 30 percent of eligible voters participated in that election. Of that number, barely 52 percent voted for Obama. That means only 15.6 percent of eligible voters in America chose Obama as their president. The other 84.4 percent either actively voted against him or chose not to participate…. That is hardly a mandate from the people! [mjh: But better than Raygun did.]
       Who is this man elected by a scant 15.6 percent of the voting public? Does he care about you and me? Clearly he does! He feels we are too stupid to intelligently manage our money, so he is going to have the government do it for us. We are too ignorant to manage our health care, so he is going to manage it for us. Do we sense a theme?… [mjh: er, yes, the theme is utter cluelessness over what’s really going on in DC.]
       What we need is to mobilize the 70 percent of the voting population that did not speak up in 2008, and in 2010 we need to radically change the population of Washington, D.C. We need people who are truly our representatives. The majority of Americans identify themselves as conservative. We need to get them out to vote and move America back to its roots. Hard work, quality of life, the nuclear family and a government that lets us run our own lives — that’s what we need.
       GENE and GRETCHEN LINCOLN
       Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots