No, no, 2.6 million (and still counting) times no. Donald Trump did not win a mandate in the 2016 presidential election. Given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by said 2.6 million-vote margin (a nearly 2-percentage point lead nationally), this is almost so obvious that it doesn't bear stating.

Except that Republicans keep on claiming – Trump-style – that the president-elect did in fact win that mythical treasure, an electoral mandate for his agenda.

Case in point is Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who keynoted a giddy Heritage Foundation dinner Tuesday night celebrating the GOP's blind luck in holding all the levers of power. "Thirty of 50 states, more counties won than since Ronald Reagan was a Republican candidate," Pence told the crowd, per Politico's Andrew Hanna. "This is a historic victory." Pence added: "We truly do believe our president-elect has secured a mandate for leadership."

He might have a point if the Constitution opened with "We the states..." or "We the counties..." But in fact the key phrase is "We the people." Or to paraphrase our greatest president, we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people – not of the counties, by the counties and for the counties.

The fact that is that on Nov. 8, the people spoke and then the system ignored their will. Clinton got 48.2 percent of the votes nationwide and Trump achieved a pathetic 46.3 percent – but won because of a bug in the political system known as the Electoral College.

Trump is a glitch president, not a mandate president.

Of course, there's an extent to which none of this matters. Mandates are ephemeral and ultimately require the assent of the defeated party. The whole point is that a president claims so much popular support that the opposition party operates with some deference simply out of practical considerations of political survival. But if Barack Obama's presidency has taught us anything, it's that there's little political price to be paid for squarely and steadfastly defying a majority president, let alone a 46-percenter.

And of course Pence and others who have tried to trot out the m-word (like House Speaker Paul Ryan) are just taking a page from the playbook of the last Republican president to enter the White House having lost the popular vote – who also happens to be the last Republican president – George W. Bush: Governing as if you won a mandate is a lot easier than accommodating the reality that you're a fluke.