>>I'm only pushing that as it relates to the question of whether he has a mandate, not the results.
"Mandate" has a definition. It's sophistry (and junk science) to invent a new definition to promote a discredited narrative.
King Canute needs to accept that the tide is coming in no matter how imaginatively "tide" is redefined to prove otherwise.
Or as KG put it so eloquently: impressive rushing stats are a sidenote if your team lost on the scoreboard that matters. Protesting and burning flags because the yardage should matter, is not competent or democratic behavior IMHO, no matter how loudly protestors holler that they're doing it to save football from a satanic champion that didn't really win.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1