It has taken me more than a week to process that Donald
Trump will be the 45th President of the United States. I never really believed
it would happen. Like most of the mainstream press, the academics, the
pollsters, the political establishments of both major parties, I watched with
increasing shock and despair on election night, as first Florida and North
Carolina, and then Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, tilted in favor of Trump. When I
finally accepted that Trump was likely to win – sometime around midnight – I
felt deep despair, as if a large weight had descended into the pit of my gut.
For the first time in my life, I was forced to acknowledge that I know not my
own country.
In hindsight, there are many reasons for Hillary Clinton’s
unexpected loss: Her message and appeal failed to capture the trust and
enthusiasm of the white working class communities in Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, and Ohio, including many of the same communities that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Clinton lacked charisma and her speeches failed to inspire.
Her campaign forever played defense and did not invoke a sense of higher
purpose. Americans wanted “change” – whatever that means – and she represented
the status quo. Trump promised to shake things up and was, like it or not, the
“change” candidate. The Latino surge didn’t quite happen. African Americans did
not turn out in the numbers we had hoped. More than half of white women voted
for Trump. Most disappointingly, 60 million Americans willingly overlooked
Trump’s express appeals to bigotry and prejudice, xenophobia and fear, misogyny
and hate, and voted for him nonetheless.
Although Clinton is ultimately responsible for her loss, FBI
Director James Comey’s handling of the email investigation unfairly and
improperly impacted the election. His extraneous comments during a press
conference in July, when he announced the FBI’s decision not to pursue a
criminal case, were inappropriate. And his ill-advised letter to Congress
eleven days before the election, which led most people to think the FBI had found
new evidence of wrongdoing, predictably halted Clinton’s momentum. When he
announced eight days later that the FBI had discovered nothing new and there
remained insufficient evidence of illegality, it was too late and the damage
was done. As a former federal prosecutor, I will never understand Comey’s
motives or why he thought he was exempt from Department of Justice policy that prohibits comment on pending or concluded investigations. We may never
really know its full impact, but the FBI’s interference with the American
electoral process was irresponsible and inexcusable.
The media, and particularly cable news, also failed at its job in 2016. The single biggest
factor in this election was the media’s embrace of celebrity culture and its
thirst for ratings at the expense of fairness and truth. Almost every day for
the past year, and sometimes several times a day, the cable news networks covered
entire Trump rallies while offering little in the way of critical analysis or
fact checking. And while the cable channels bequeathed to Trump nearly $3
billion of free air time, there was typically no similarly
unabridged coverage of his opponents.
For all of the attention placed on Clinton’s emails, where
were the stories and investigations into the hundreds of past and pending lawsuits
against Trump, many for racial and gender discrimination, fraud, and unethical
business practices? Why did the press fail to highlight and question Trump about
his flagrant lies and distortions that left me speechless on a daily basis? His
childish insults and tweets, his crowd-pleasing mocking of reporters and
protesters, his supporters’ chants of “lock her up” and other hate-filled
rhetoric, were frightening and un-American. And yet, the press routinely dismissed these plentiful horrors merely as "Trump being Trump."
But I do not wish to dwell on the negativity of this
election other than to note that the Trump campaign was a low point in American
electoral history. I am shell-shocked and disappointed with the outcome, but I
accept the results. Although Clinton won the popular vote, we elect our
president through the Electoral College, and Trump won according to the rules
as they presently exist. He is legitimately the President elect.
Although I understand the frustrations and despair of the many protesters
marching and chanting against Trump in some of our cities, I hope that will
soon stop. Among the most offensive aspects of the last eight years were
conservative attacks on the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency, including
the birther movement, fomented by Mr. Trump and magnified by such alt-right
news outlets as Breitbart.com under the guidance of Trump’s campaign manager, and now chief strategist, Steve Bannon. I will not soon forget these thinly-veiled
racist attacks on our nation’s first African American president. It is also wrong,
however, to exclaim that Trump is “Not My President” for this slogan protests
not his policies but the legitimacy of the election. Organize the opposition,
fight implementation of Trump’s policies after he takes office, hold his feet
to the fire and pressure the Republican Congress, but don’t delegitimize the
nation’s institutions of democracy.
So where do we go from here?
First, we need to give Trump a chance at governing. He will not take the oath of office until January 20, 2017. Let’s see who he picks to fill his Cabinet seats. Let’s give him an opportunity to moderate his extreme and irresponsible campaign “promises” such as building a wall (okay, maybe not a wall, he says now, but at least a fence), repealing the Affordable Care Act (he apparently likes its main provisions and now only wants to amend it), deporting eleven million undocumented immigrants (he has largely backed off of this one as well), and putting Hillary Clinton in jail (following her “gracious” concession, he seems to have lost his vindictive, banana republic instincts). Of course, we must watch his every move, because what he says one day means nothing a day later.
First, we need to give Trump a chance at governing. He will not take the oath of office until January 20, 2017. Let’s see who he picks to fill his Cabinet seats. Let’s give him an opportunity to moderate his extreme and irresponsible campaign “promises” such as building a wall (okay, maybe not a wall, he says now, but at least a fence), repealing the Affordable Care Act (he apparently likes its main provisions and now only wants to amend it), deporting eleven million undocumented immigrants (he has largely backed off of this one as well), and putting Hillary Clinton in jail (following her “gracious” concession, he seems to have lost his vindictive, banana republic instincts). Of course, we must watch his every move, because what he says one day means nothing a day later.
Trump seems already to be learning what President Obama and
Secretary Clinton already know, that governing a country as large and complex
as the United States is hard. As President, he will be forced to understand and
balance enormous international and diplomatic pressures, intense national
security concerns and foreign entanglements, and conflicting domestic political
interests. The federal bureaucracy is vast and complex and does a lot of really
important things, from protecting our homeland to inspecting our food supply, to keep this country running smoothly. The Affordable Care Act
may require modification, but as Trump has already discovered, there are many
aspects of the law that Americans want and need. You cannot simply cut off the
health care coverage of 20 million people and go back to the way things were
without causing extreme hardship and devastation. Unilaterally revoking treaties
and trade deals will not only endanger international relations, but will cause
massive disruption to our economy. Being Commander-in-Chief is not as easy as
it looks, even for a guy who built a few hotels and thinks he knows more
than the Generals.
Second, the Democratic Party must find a way to better
understand and appeal to the working classes of all races and ethnicities. We
used to be the party of working men and women. Although I personally believe
Democratic policies are much better for working families than Republican
policies, the Democrats need to shake its image as the party of upper crust "elites". We must recognize that at least some of Trump’s support in this
election was motivated, not by bigotry and xenophobia, but by legitimate anxieties
about the American economy and concern for the future. Yes, Trump exploited
these anxieties and inflamed them through racially-tinged and nationalistic
fear-mongering, but for millions of rank-and-file union members, low-wage
workers, farmers, and small business owners, the anxieties caused by an ever
changing economy and globalization are real and legitimate.
Third, we must closely scrutinize Trump’s choice for the
vacant Supreme Court seat. This one was not supposed to be his choice. This one was President
Obama's to fill. For nine months the
Republicans refused to hold even a hearing on the nomination of Merrick Garland,
a distinguished and respected jurist with indisputable qualifications. Democrats
should filibuster whomever Trump chooses and not back down unless Trump
nominates a consensus moderate in much the same way President Obama nominated
one in Garland. On most matters I want the Democrats to be the adults in the
room and to not play games with American democracy or damage American interests
as Republicans have so frequently done the past eight years. But on this issue,
we should give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine.
Finally, we must remain active and engaged, especially in
this perilous moment of history. We must not allow America to fall victim to
the rising tide of nationalism and xenophobia that has befallen much of Europe.
Trump’s authoritarian instincts must be unequivocally resisted. Attempts to
restrict our civil liberties, to turn away from our moral and historic
obligation as a welcoming nation to refugees and persecuted immigrants, to
discriminate against religious minorities or to foment fear and hatred against whole
classes of people, must be fought with every non-violent tool in our democratic
arsenal.
“The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as
in an individual's life,” says Hillary Clinton, “is to become cynical about the
future and lose hope.” It is good advice, for Democrats and all Americans, as
we attempt to make sense of the Trump years.