An Open Letter to President-elect Trump and His Supporters

To President-elect Donald J. Trump and My Fellow Americans Who Voted for Him:

         I write to you out of a concern for the country that we all love. The contest on November 8th was free and fair, and in any ordinary election year it would only be left to congratulate the winner, allow the transition team to work, and await January 20th. This is not an ordinary election year, however.

         Mr. Trump, I wish that I could congratulate you, but the manner in which you conducted your campaign precludes me from doing so. You are the first modern president-elect to have joked about killing journalists. Or to have toyed with the idea of forcing people to enter a special registry because of their religion. Or to have waxed nostalgic about "the good old days" when dissent was met with bludgeoning. Or to have declared a member of the judiciary incompetent to serve because of his ethnicity. Or to have threatened to have citizens' marriages declared invalid. With these and other inflammatory statements you excited the enthusiasm of one-half of the electorate, but in so doing you completely forfeited the trust of the other half. Your defenders might protest that these statements were only bluster, but now that they are the words of the future President of the United States, no one who might be affected by them can view them as amusing or benign. You have squandered the confidence that you will need from the people you hope to govern, and as a result the whole constitutional edifice in which you are about to play a key role is endangered.

        You have expressed skepticism of or derision for the many who have taken to the streets to protest since your election. This is a serious mistake; the fears and concerns of those protesters are undeniably legitimate. Secretary Clinton was right to say that her supporters owe you an "open mind," but the insistent calls of the protesters for fair treatment are the best response that one can expect from an open-minded citizen given the tone of your campaign and the nature of your provocations.

         In all honesty, Mr. Trump, because I have been a lifelong Democrat and oppose many of your stated policy goals, under the best circumstances the most you could have hoped for from me was a posture of "loyal opposition." As things stand, however, we are a long way from the best circumstances. Though I accede the legitimacy of your election and revere the office that you will hold, I cannot offer you the normal deference a citizen owes his or her President before you repudiate the bigotry and illiberality that was the hallmark of your campaign. Unless and until I have been given reason to believe that you will fulfill your constitutional role in good faith, without injury to the rights and freedoms of the groups that you threatened (Muslims, women, Latin@s, people of color, LGBTQ citizens) I must add my voice to the protesters now decrying your election.

        Though, in fairness, you have made some statements that were reassuring, they have not been enough. Your thanking of Secretary Clinton for her service and your televised call for your supporters to refrain from expressions of hatred both showed the proper spirit of reconciliation. But in the same way that you galvanized your supporters during the campaign with audacious gestures, you must find some dramatic signal of your determination to win back the trust of those you have alienated.

         In this regard you have gotten off to a bad start. Your appointment of Stephen Bannon, a man steeped in white supremacist, ethnic nationalist, and anti-Semitic politics, completely undermines the confidence of those you need to win over. A reversal of that decision would go a long way to establishing trust. Beyond this, some political sign of your determination to forge an independent path might force people to reassess their impression of you. If, for example, you were to recommend the confirmation of Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court Justice during the lame-duck session of Congress, this would project a willingness for fair compromise that might ease your opponents' fears.

       To my fellow Americans who voted for Donald Trump, I offer my unreserved congratulations. Your civic activism has garnered an historic and transformative victory, your feelings no doubt resemble my own in 2008 and 2012. I would only ask that you, like President-elect Trump, give serious consideration to the apprehensions of voters like me that were on the other side of the last election. Mr. Trump comes into his office under the greatest trust deficit of any president since the Civil War. It will take careful leadership on his part to insure that he can get around all of the obstacles that he has placed in his own way, and earnest citizenship on the part of everyone else to move the process of reconciliation forward to the point where his presidency has a chance to succeed. Though we are bound to disagree in the months and years ahead, if we proceed in the spirit of mutual respect and open communication, we can ensure the continued flourishing of the constitutional order that is our shared legacy as Americans and in which we are all blessed to participate.

               Sincerely,

               Andrew Meyer