Hillary Clinton is not the next United States president, but she is certainly a very wise woman.
In her concession speech to President-elect Donald Trump, she told America, “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.”
And we do. Wednesday morning, the sun rose on the aftermath of the 2016 Election in a way that seemed much more like a bloody battle than a race to the White House. Trump has said and done things that cast deep and serious aspersions on his presidency. They were dubious things that were deeply offensive to most people across the country — and anathema to the Constitution and the office.
But we must set that aside and be genuine in doing so. It’s impossible for anyone to know what kind of a president Trump will because he has said so many contradictory, dismissed and retracted things for many months, and even years. To be generous, Trump is a populist, and we must give him the opportunity and the room to re-invent himself to back a direction where the majority of people want to go.
This is a country that has moved beyond the tacit tolerance of gays and lesbians and have embraced their deserved and equal rights. There will be no going back on this, and the populist Trump will almost certainly not try and drag America where it won’t go.
Americans have made clear they stand solidly behind a health-care system that doesn’t shut people out because they become ill and desperately need the health-insurance that shuns them — after taking their money. That part of Obamacare is irrevocable in the minds of almost all Americans. So as Trump and the GOP-led Congress begin to make good on threats to “repeal” Obamacare, we can probably be assured that what a new Congress comes up with will preserve aspects that Americans want: affordable access for everyone.
But much of Trump’s other promises bring a much more worrisome future to the country and to his own presidency.
We wish Trump luck in bringing back hundreds of thousands of high-paying factory and unskilled-labor jobs, but are highly skeptical. Great Britain is struggling with much of the same issue since its stunning “Brexit” vote, and the economic fallout of newfound isolationism is not going well.
As to Trump’s promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, the country, and world, we’ll have to wait and see if Trump will be waylaid by the reality of such an endeavor.
Right here in Colorado and Aurora, we have a lot to be nervous about as the world waits to see what President Donald Trump looks and acts like as he emerges.
Should he make good on promises to treat Muslim-Americans differently than other Americans, Aurora and Colorado will need to work to protect them from any kind of national backlash. We would anticipate that the courts would prevent a legislative threat to civil rights, but Aurora, as a community, would certainly need to rise to challenge to ensure our Muslim neighbors, friends and families are not abused or mistreated.
Similarly, should a deportation effort by Trump create an atmosphere of abuse of our Latino community or outright human rights violations, Aurora, we know, would rise to stop it.
We are hopeful that Trump and his advisors will see the wisdom in abandoning these ill-conceived campaign notions that are so contradictory to who we are as a nation and a community, even if it means angering a base of supporters that elevated Trump to the White House for these explicit promises. Those supporters, too, must have an open mind about Trump, and we all must give him an opportunity to lead.