Democrats are so gloomy you’d think we were about to inaugurate Abraham Lincoln.
The base line of sentiment is understandable: It ain’t fun to lose.
But the vehemence is over the top.
We mean, a man set himself on fire outside the inauguree-to-be’s hotel Wednesday. Even assuming that that poor soul is mentally unbalanced, people who are presumed to be in touch with their faculties have been issuing crazy statements by the day.
“I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president,” U.S. Representative John Lewis said during Meet the Press last weekend, adding that there was a “conspiracy” involving the Russians to get Trump elected.
Trump’s incoming administration “really scares” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.
Rosie O’Donnell called for soon-to-be-former President Barack Obama to declare martial law to prevent Trump from taking power.
What?
Let’s review.
Trump is officially for tax cuts, immigration controls, replacing Obamacare, judges who follow the federal constitution, more religious freedom, and friendly relations with Russia.
Let’s stipulate that most liberals don’t like these things.
But what is so scary about them?
Trump has nominated accomplished, thoughtful people to high positions in the executive branch. They’re so well spoken that Democratic senators out for blood have been struggling to achieve pin pricks during the hearings on Capitol Hill.
Are all their ideas good? Will they all do flawless work?
No, of course not. But overall, in terms of ideas and experience, they’re higher-quality people than any president in recent memory has nominated.
So why all these claims of fear?
President-elect Trump’s only possible missteps, if you can even call them that, are his continuing tit-for-tat tweets, which seem to elevate needlessly every sorehead who bellyaches about him somewhere in public.
But what do we know? Like the rest of you around a year and a half ago, we didn’t think he could be nominated much less elected. He did it his way, which includes intemperate tweets. He fights back at every provocation, and that’s a large part of his perception of strength.
And besides, are his tweets really that upsetting? Don’t you sort of smile and shake your head when you hear about a new one?
On that note, as we contemplate the transition of power on Friday, let’s try to be cheerful.
At New Boston Post, our disagreements with Donald Trump as president will probably begin soon, maybe even on Inauguration Day.
But they will be disagreements, not fear.
And we won’t imagine that he isn’t actually president just because he gets something wrong.
Here’s an example: Barack Obama was a terrible president, and he was always likely to be given his bad ideas and his poor level of experience.
But how many prominent people who saw the Obama train wreck coming claimed the week before he was first inaugurated that he wouldn’t be a legitimate president? He won a majority of electoral votes. Twice, somehow. He was a legitimate president.
