Is Bush's re-election really a 'mandate'?

Blogger MyDD makes some good points:
- This is the largest number of people who have ever voted AGAINST a president
- 1% more than 50% is not a mandate but a bare, thin, majority.
- At 80% approval after 9-11 and guaranteed a landslide election by prognosticators 2 years ago, only half the country supports him
- A president who leads a divided country owes it to all Americans to lead fairly or have his party face the consequences begining in 2006. No one else is here to blame.
Another Liberal Blog empathizes that Bush's victory is in fact the weakest incumbent reelection since, well, a long time.
- Assuming Bush gets New Mexico and Iowa, he will have gotten the lowest percentage of electoral votes (54%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Wilson. If those two states should swing Kerry's way (NM might), it'll be even lower.
- He will have won with the lowest percentage of the popular vote (51%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (well, technically since Clinton, but he also ran against Perot, who was a more significant 3rd-party candidate than Thurmond and Wallace were in '48)
- He will have won by the lowest margin of the popular vote (3.5M) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (2.1M, and back then only 50M voted).
- He will have won the three states that put him over 270 (OH, NM and IA - assuming the last two go his way) by only 161,989 (not counting the provisional ballots, absentee, etc.).