It has taken a couple of days for me to sit down and write this because the election results were, for me as they were for many people, completely unexpected and nothing less than soul crushing.
{mosads}My 9-year-old girl had excitedly voted with her father on Tuesday for what she and so many others thought would be the first woman president and my 11-year-old boy was prepared to celebrate history instead of mourning the results. But when the results came in I had to tell them we live in the greatest democracy in the world.
As they were sobbing at the news, my husband and I gently explained they had nothing to fear, that we live in the most amazing country on earth with incredibly durable institutions that are bigger and stronger than just one person. We told them that our values would prevail but that we would have to continue to fight for them and speak up for those who had no voice.
My children and — as I have learned from friends, family, Facebook and emails — many of America’s children were inconsolable because of the outcome of this election.
They are worried. They are scared. They are afraid for themselves, their families or their friends’ families.
This is the result of the last year and a half of vitriol, hate speech, bigoted commentary, and disrespectful rhetoric spread and encouraged by our President-Elect Donald Trump.
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But I also told my children we need to give Trump a chance. I told them he had been very gracious in his comments the night of the election. I told them he had said he wants to bring the country together and be the president for everybody.
As my son told me, “Mama, fortunately, we have three branches of government that won’t let Trump do what he wants, including building a wall and deporting all Latinos.” Wow. And exactly.
What I didn’t tell my children was how skeptical I was at hearing Trump’s conciliatory speech the night of the election. It is easy to be magnanimous in your moment of victory.
It will be harder to be magnanimous when he walks into the Oval Office knowing he won against all odds, against all conventional wisdom, even against the instincts of his own advisors. It will be harder because he has the White House and because Republicans control the House and the Senate.
What can stop him from doing exactly everything he said he would do?
Hopefully common sense stops him. Hopefully he follows his own real beliefs and not his siren song of demagoguery that lured millions of supporters to his side.
Hopefully some sense that he now has a huge responsibility on his shoulders stops him and he recognizes his challenge to heal a raw, divided, and in many cases, angry country.
Hopefully his own words of wanting to be the president for all people stops him, including the people he spent months vilifying, belittling, disrespecting, and marginalizing.
So while many of us will try to have an open mind, Mr. Trump needs to know that it will take much more than 5 minutes of prepared remarks that sound nice but that are the complete opposite and contrary to what had been coming out of his mouth for 15 months.
The meeting today between President Obama and President-elect Trump seems to have gone well. President Obama said they had an excellent meeting, and Mr. Trump called President Obama “a good man.” I will give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt that Republicans never gave President Obama when he took office eight years ago. The republic must persevere first and foremost.
But perseverance will take real effort from Mr. Trump and he will need to reach out to the communities who now fear his presidency. And it is on him to make the first gestures, especially when he has made no gestures at all, for the entirely of his campaign, to many communities who are now so distraught.
In this group of Americans I include Muslims, the disabled, and minority communities who have received the brunt of Mr. Trump’s punches.
But let me say a word about the Latino community in particular, who came out in record numbers to support Hillary Clinton.
Many of the exit polls failed to capture Latino sentiment. As public polls in general tend to do, they get Latino support wrong because they do not interview voters in heavily Latino precincts, nor do they interview in Spanish.
In fact, despite what some exit polls have stated, a Latino Decisions analysis concluded that Ms. Clinton received around 78 percent of the Latino vote and Mr. Trump 18 percent which is line with the polls from pollsters who actually know how to poll Latinos.
As such, this is a community that is particularly concerned.
Trump’s pledge to build a wall and deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants took a toll on the psychological well-being of not only the families of these 11 million but of many Latinos who know them, or who simply are targeted by vile Trump supporters who mistake our brown skin, our language, or our accent for what they wrongly assume is our illegality here in this country.
So I hope Mr. Trump understands what is at hand.
When you have predominantly minority and immigrant schools who send letters the morning after the election assuring students who are Muslim, immigrant, disabled, LGBTQ, Latino, or even girls that they will be protected from bullying or disrespectful speech, that is an indication that we live in a different reality that Mr. Trump helped create and only Mr. Trump can help dissipate.
And, as crushed as I feel at the results of the election, I and many others are willing to do our part to help in any way we can to bridge this divide and rise up to the challenge which the whole country faces with Mr. Trump at the helm.
I look forward to hearing how he plans on doing just that. We will be waiting. And watching.
Cardona is a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a Democratic strategist and a CNN/CNN Español political commentator. Follow her on Twitter @MariaTCardona.
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