The right wing press, punditocracy, and blogosphere will be blazing today with apologetics fueled by the myth of the mandate. That solemn feeling that sometimes victory carries with it something more powerful than that which was won in the contest. In this case, it seems to be some magical supplication that can be bestowed by the electorate that grants the President more authority than that which actually accrues to the office he won.

It is, of course, just more bullshit designed to delegitimize the President. It exists only to make it so conservatives don't seem churlish and irresponsible when they obstruct or demean the President in a manner that actually harms the country. They tell themselves that they can do this because, even though they are in the minority and their guy lost, the President didn't collect  enough magic win beads or something  -- as if winning/losing wasn't actually a binary state.

So, to all of you who will inevitably, and interminably over the next four years, recite this trope in your continued suffering from acute Obama-Derangement-Syndrome, I pose this following question[s]:

When you're all sitting around the office attaching the loudest bells and whistles to the latest contrived Obama centric controversy, and you decide to order in lunch, what happens when everybody votes for pizza except you? When the pizza arrives, do you piss and moan about Pad Thai  and how the "pie" gang didn't actually have a lunch mandate? Do you eat it, perhaps not with gustatory enjoyment, but ultimately gain nourishment from it? Do you stand on absurd principle, cross your arms, close your eyes, and clench shut your jaws as to avoid even the chance of being force fed that which you did not mandate? Do  you attempt to discourage the others from eating the pizza? How far do you go with this discouragement? Do you attempt to shame those who voted noodle with you? Do you block their access to the pizza? Do you adulterate the pizza by spitting on it? Or, do you take a more active role by knocking the slices out of the hands of the majority, before they can take a bit?

Seriously, my conservative friends, I'd like to know how you manage being in the minority of any type of democratic outcome when anything less than unanimity denies a "mandate"? I think you really need to focus on finding the answer to this question, because you're long, long, exile into the tall grass of the minority has just begun.