An Open Letter to President-Elect Donald Trump

Thursday,  November 10, 2016

Dear Mr. Trump:

 I am one of the 60,122,876 people who didn’t vote for you on Tuesday. I didn’t vote for you because as far as I can tell you have neither the experience, knowledge nor temperament to be President.Furthermore, you seem to have only a tenuous grasp on reality and an inability to tell the truth. But most of all, I didn’t vote for you because you have, with your belligerent, bullying, demeaning rhetoric, fanned the flames of hate and anger in many of your supporters, legitimizing their racist, misogynist, hateful attitudes toward  women, blacks,  Latinos,  other ethnic minorities,  Muslims,  people in the  LGBT community, people with disabilities and  many others.  Just this week,  two of my friends and neighbors have been accosted and traumatized by  people whose hate and anger you have legitimized.

Maybe you didn’t see this coming, but a lot of us did, and it terrified us. It still terrifies us. You say you want to be the President of all the people, but how can that be when you have in effect told your followers that it’s all right to attack and accost those you have targeted in your speeches? How can that be when you have bragged about how smart you are for not paying the taxes that support our schools, our libraries, our hospitals, our  police, our military, our veterans, taxes that guarantee that we have safe food to eat, clean air to breathe and water to drink, that our roads are built and kept in repair, that provide a safety net for those who  fall through the cracks, for the  elderly, for people with disabilities, for the working poor who often work two jobs and still have trouble keeping  their children clothed and fed? Which leads me to question how you  can be pro-life, yet talk about cutting back or taking away services and programs that help to sustain and improve life for those already born? You say you want to make America great again, but how can you do that when you have encouraged your followers to turn on their fellow citizens much as the KKK turned on blacks and Jews and Catholics, when hangings and cross burnings were common during some of the darker, not so great periods of our recent history? And now you have the endorsement of the KKK and some of its leaders, who now feel so emboldened that they are distributing flyers in neighborhoods close to me.

You said that you will bring back jobs and industries that once thrived but are now shuttered, the jobs shipped out of the country. Mr. Trump, a lot of those jobs aren’t coming back, they’re finished. But we do need to encourage innovation for new products, particularly in areas of green energy so we can build up supply chains with skilled jobs that pay well.  We need to support labor unions with their training and apprentice programs to provide a well-paid, skilled workforce. We need to replace the coal and retrain miners for these new jobs so that they can become productive, able to support their families and  be proud of the work they do.  But of course, you believe climate change is a Chinese hoax, don’t you, so no green energy jobs, I guess.  We need to support companies that pledge to  keep jobs here and invest in their workers rather than outsourcing or shipping their operations  abroad, while avoiding paying their share of taxes. We need to find a way to encourage small businesses, and to support American farmers and manufacturers through effective, efficient and fair trade policies and tariffs  that benefit us and our trading partners.

We need to strengthen our ties with our allies, not threaten to abandon them by withdrawing from NATO, and we need to stand up to Russia’s threat of aggression in the Baltic states, not check our balance sheets to determine whether they“have fulfilled their obligations to us.”  That’s kind of rich coming from someone who doesn’t even pay his federal taxes. No, Mr. Trump, I don’t have much confidence in your abilities, nor in your program and policy proposals, and even less in the people you  are reported to be  looking to  appoint  to Cabinet positions.

I would love to be proven wrong, that the great plans, the best plans that you refer to, whatever they are, actually will work well for the nation as a whole. But I would remind you that while you may have won a stunning victory in garnering the most Electoral College votes, you did not win a mandate from the people.  Your opponent actually won the popular vote by roughly 300,000 votes at last count.  Those of us who voted for Sec. Clinton are watching you, and we will let you know how we think you’re doing. Meanwhile I suggest that you make some attempt to rein in your supporters, whose sparks of anger and fear and hate have been fanned into  a raging fire that, if not checked, will burn this nation to such a degree that we will not be able to recover for perhaps generations.  I don’t think you, or any of us, want that.

Sincerely,

Grace K. B. Smith

A political rant, because sometimes, you just have to say it.

OK, I've had it up to here with all the Hillary bashing and the talk about how Bill Clinton's policies were the worst thing that could have happened to women, to blacks to the poor, to immigrants, etc., etc. and how Hillary will just be more of the same. Bill  Clinton was not a perfect president; he made some mistakes, some pretty bad ones, actually.  But  he also  kept  a lot of things from becoming really horrendous for a lot of people in this country. Where were you people in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich was ramming his "Contract with America" down our throats? Where were you when a Republican Congress was insisting, and refused to budge, on cutting food stamps by $24 billion over six years, with $3 billion more cut by banning food stamps to legal immigrants and insisting on no food stamps for unemployed workers not raising children, without any hardship exemptions? Do you remember when Congress also refused to budge on allowing legal immigrants to receive social services, declaring that legal immigrants who had not become U.S. citizens could not get Federal welfare benefits and social services during their first five years in the U.S.,  and insisting that food stamps and SSI benefits be cut off?

Do you recall that President Clinton vetoed two welfare reform bills put forward by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole before finally signing a third one in which he had managed to force some compromises from Gingrich and Dole. Congress had called for letting the states determine how to allocate food stamp money and determine eligibility requirements for the program. Clinton managed to preserve national standards and the guarantee that the poor will obtain food stamps.  He also won the fight to guarantee Medicaid coverage- another program the Congress wanted to turn completely over to the states. Clinton also succeeded in strengthening day care support for children of welfare recipients. Congress had been demanding much deeper cuts than the cuts that were in the final bill signed by the President.

How many of you remember the  "Taking Back Our Streets Act" of 1994 proposed by   the Republican Congress, that sought to establish a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years for state or federal drug or violent crimes involving possession of a gun, or the repeal of the Crime Control Act that had provided funds for drug courts, community justice programs and social prevention spending?  Clinton did what he could to get Congress to compromise before signing some of these bills to prevent a total gridlock in Washington. Maybe he could have fought harder, dug his heels in, refused to compromise, etc. Then you’d be complaining about something else he did or didn’t accomplish.

I remember those years  too well, and I remember  how frustrated and angry I got every time I saw Gingrich with his smarmy smile and his hateful, nightmarish proposals. Clinton vetoed 35 bills between 1995-2000 and although the Republicans challenged 11 of those vetoes, they were able to override only one. But Clinton was an adept  politician who knew how to use the threat of a veto to get the Republicans to back down from some of their more nightmarish  proposals, and he threatened  a veto on  140 bills in order to get those concessions. Without those concessions, the poor, the middle class, the American worker, the immigrant population would have most likely been much worse off. So no, I don’t think Bill Clinton was the worst thing that happened to  a lot of people, nor do I think Hillary, if she were  elected, would be either.  She has already shown that she knows who and what she’s dealing with and has demonstrated her ability to stand up to them under some of the most adverse conditions.  In my opinion,  she has both the domestic and foreign policy experience to be the next president  and commander-in-chief and I  will continue to support her.