Messenger: Biden channels Lincoln after Trump's win: We are not enemies, but friends
The three-letter text from my son was like a picture that is worth 1,000 words.
"Bro," it said.
It was Wednesday morning, and my college-aged son awoke to the knowledge that Donald Trump, a twice-impeached convicted felon and leader of an insurrection, was elected to be the next president of the United States.
I knew what those three letters meant. This was my son's first election. We were both on the other side, having cast our votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.
It's hard as a voter to process being on the losing side, particularly when a top general who used to serve the winner calls him a "fascist." I told my son I've been on the losing side as a voter more often than not. So it was in 1988, the first time I voted in a presidential election.
I was excited that year because Gary Hart, the U.S. senator from my home state of Colorado, was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Hart had been elected to the Senate after Watergate, the corruption scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Hart was the favored candidate of young people, and we were excited to vote for him.
Then Monkey Business happened . That's the name of the yacht where Hart was having an affair with Donna Rice. He got caught after challenging reporters to follow him. The Miami Herald did, caught him red-handed, published a story with photos of Hart and Rice on the yacht, and the rest is history.
It's quaint thinking back to those days, when an affair could bring down a presidential candidate. Trump's had plenty of those. His voters look past them.
After Hart stepped away from the race, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis took over front-runner status and won the Democratic nomination for the right to face George H. W. Bush. I didn't like Dukakis as much as Hart, but he earned my first presidential vote. He lost in a historic landslide, with Bush winning 426 electoral votes , the last time a presidential race wasn't relatively close.
I remember as a young voter feeling strangely disconnected from my country, wondering why so many people in nearly every state could see the world through a different lens.
In this election, a new generation of voters is experiencing that feeling, though the stakes are more ominous. Trump has, for instance, promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, putting many Hispanic people's lives and futures in danger.
On Thursday morning, the International Institute of St. Louis sent out a news release setting off alarm bells. The nonprofit has been instrumental in helping refugees and immigrants settle in the St. Louis region, working hand-in-hand with administrations of both parties. But Trump's re-emergence has put groups that help immigrant populations on notice.
"As an organization serving immigrants and refugees, the views of the incoming administration contradict the values that guide our work," read the letter from the International Institute to its supporters.
"We will not give in to despair," the group's president and CEO, Arrey Obenson, wrote. "We plan to be here tomorrow, next year, five years from now and beyond serving this community."
Indeed, that was my advice to my son and my youngest daughter, who isn't old enough to vote yet but was hoping America would elect its first woman president.
Go to school. Dive into work. Don't give in to despair.
Most of us live our daily lives far removed from the election intensity that bubbles up for a month or so every four years. The bellicosity in the Age of Trump makes that a little more difficult, but there will be more elections.
Bush, after his election win, famously promised "no new taxes." When he couldn't deliver, he was sent packing four years later. American voters can be a fickle bunch.
As potentially dire as a Trump presidency feels from my perch, valuable context can be gained by going back even further in history — to Abraham Lincoln's election, when the Civil War was brewing and states were starting to secede from the Union.
"While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years," Lincoln said in his first inaugural speech, adding, "We are not enemies, but friends."
The war that followed suggests not enough Americans shared that sentiment. But the union survived, and we will this time, too. As we await the next leader to inspire a new period of American unity, it's worth remembering that Lincoln's aspiration was the correct one. Outgoing President Joe Biden seems to think so, too.
"You can't love your country only when you win," he said Thursday afternoon in an address to the nation. "You can't love your neighbor only when you agree."
Metro columnist
