{"id":19558,"date":"2017-01-18T04:58:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T04:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=19558"},"modified":"2017-01-18T04:58:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T04:58:08","slug":"post-election-political-healing-trump-nation-says-democrats-heal-thyself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/post-election-political-healing-trump-nation-says-democrats-heal-thyself.html","title":{"rendered":"Post-election political healing? Trump Nation says Democrats, heal thyself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Post-election political healing? Trump Nation says Democrats, heal thyself<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Post-election political healing? Trump Nation says Democrats, heal thyself:-<\/strong> \u201cHappy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.\u2019\u2019 \u2014 Donald J. Trump<\/span>
\n At inauguration time, magnanimity usually prevails. Winners reach out to losers and a brief honeymoon ensues. But many Trump supporters say there\u2019s little this president-elect can, should, or probably will do to mollify Hillary Clinton supporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Erwin Jackson, a Tallahassee, Fla., landlord, says political healing is overrated anyway: \u201cI\u2019m not worried about people who are disappointed. I\u2019m excited. The Democrats are in denial. Healing is something they\u2019re gonna have to work out on their own.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Pat Acciavatti, a retired excavating company owner in St. Clair Township, Mich., agrees: \u201cWhen Obama won, and when Bill Clinton won, I just shut up, hung my head and took my medicine. I wasn\u2019t protesting in the street.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Trump inherits a more divided country than any recent predecessor, he seems less interested than any in making nice. And that\u2019s OK with Trump Nation, which generally believes there are only two remedies to the post-election divide.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is time. \u201cIt heals all wounds,\u2019\u2019 says Barry Fixler, a Bardonia, N.Y., jewelry store owner who opened his own local Trump headquarters last year. But, he predicts, \u201cit\u2019ll take the Democrats years to come around.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The other is for Trump to do what he said he\u2019ll do \u2014 like bring back jobs, secure the Southern border and generally make America great again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to promote more positive interactions between the two camps,\u2019\u2019 says Rachel Quade, a real estate agent and Republican activist who lives outside Indianapolis. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to stay angry when there\u2019s good news.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Gene Dunn of Medford, N.Y., so ardent a Trump admirer that he took his son out of school last year to go see Trump announce his candidacy, says the new president also can unite the nation by \u201cfinding common ground on issues that transcend ideological lines.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

One example: Move the Super Bowl to Saturday or to Sunday of Presidents Day weekend, so revelers won\u2019t have work the next day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Presidents always come into office with an agenda and a mandate. As Barack Obama famously told Republican congressional leaders eight years ago, \u201cElections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

But winning candidates usually make at least a show of bipartisanship.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2000, after Al Gore conceded the presidency, George W. Bush made a nationally televised speech from the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives. \u201cHere, in a place where Democrats have the majority, Republicans and Democrats have worked together,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cThe spirit of cooperation I have seen in this hall is what\u2019s needed in Washington.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2009, Obama attended a dinner honoring John McCain, the GOP nominee, on the night before the inauguration, and he spoke warmly of McCain at a luncheon after the inauguration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Trump has the lowest approval rating of any recent incoming president, it would seem logical for him to try to mend fences.<\/span><\/p>\n

At times he has. He spoke graciously of Clinton after she conceded defeat and said \u201cit’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.\u2019\u2019 In a Today show interview last month, he promised, \u201cWe\u2019re going to have a country that\u2019s very well-healed.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

But for the most part \u2014 especially on Twitter, and unlike any recent president-elect \u2014 he\u2019s stayed in campaign mode.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s lashed out at Bill Clinton, the cast of Hamilton, Alec Baldwin and Saturday Night Live, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He\u2019s called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who expressed a willingness to work with him, a \u201cclown.\u201d Since praising Hillary Clinton, he\u2019s regularly dismissed her as weak and clueless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some Trump supporters say their leader is really no less bipartisan than any other victorious presidential candidate \u2014 especially Obama. Upon taking office, Jackson says, \u201che went off so far, so fast to the left. He passed Obamacare with no Republican support.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Others would just as soon Trump hit Democrats with an olive branch as offer them one. His nine-state, post-election victory tour was marked by cries, familiar from the campaign against Clinton, of \u201cLock her up!\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

When Trump supporters encounter these political divisions in their own lives, however, they tend to deal with them more sensitively.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fixler says he gets along with his Clinton-voter daughter by not talking politics. Jackson keeps the peace with his mother-in-law by agreeing to disagree. Lora Hubbel of Vermillion, S.D., jokingly told her daughter she didn\u2019t want to know how she voted, because if she knew she\u2019d voted for Clinton, she\u2019d have to rewrite her will.<\/span><\/p>\n

But sometimes silence, diplomacy or ignorance aren\u2019t enough. Trump voter Jeff Lau says the election almost cost him a friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Nov. 9 the two were at the brewpub Lau owns in York, Pa., for their usual Wednesday night cornhole game. Lau was ribbing his buddy, who\u2019d voted for Clinton. But the guy was distraught, and said he was worried about Trump starting a war. Lau told him he was \u201cacting kooky.\u2019\u2019 The next thing he knew, the pal had walked out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lau had to call him the next day: \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry if I embarrassed you. I\u2019m your friend.\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

But Trump supporters say making up isn\u2019t their man\u2019s style, and wouldn\u2019t work anyway. \u201cIf you\u2019re taking on the whole Democratic Party and an entrenched bureaucracy, saying \u2018Please,\u2019 probably won\u2019t change things,\u2019\u2019 says Jackson.<\/span><\/p>\n

And he’d better think twice before making concessions. \u201cThat would anger the hell out of me!\u2019\u2019 says Hubbel, who describes herself as a born-again Christian. \u201cWe\u2019ve been ignored, put down and railroaded, and he\u2019s slapping us in the face if he does that. Backing off is disrespectful to the people who elected you!\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

So campaign passions remain hot. Although Gene Dunn calls for finding common ground, he also thinks that Trump, immediately after taking office, should sit at a table on the Capitol podium and revoke the Affordable Care Act and some executive orders.<\/span><\/p>\n

His rationale: \u201cObama openly mocked Trump and his candidacy. What better way for Trump to exact political revenge than to unexpectedly humiliate him in front of the world with billions watching on TV?\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/div>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t