Yes, Congratulations!

A truly wonderful college friend is being considered for Secretary of Labor so I am thrilled about that :) She's bipartisan, classy and super smart.

My candidate lost this election but I understand the current which lead to the victory before us.

That's awesome d_gw.

He was not my preferred candidate, but I am far more hopeful than if Hillary had won. I cannot wait to see what judges he appoints. I think Trump is such an unconventional candidate that maybe this could be a great thing because he'll do things differently.

We'll have to wait and see.

It's a little scary, but I have glimpses of great enthusiasm for the possibilities of changes our country needs.

It's like the slate has been wiped clean, and we get a fresh start.

I keep thinking....what if he really does make a good President?

The media had the stock market crashing, and the opposite has happened so far. Hope, rising.

This is this is just the sweetest thing ever!!! (((((((Hugs))))))))

I just said to DH, 'I wonder what the stock market would have done/been doing if Hillary was elected".

I think it would have dropped initially because of the uncertainty, but would it have rebounded so robustly?

After meeting with Barack, Trump said he's a very nice man. He also said he's now considering keeping two parts of the ACA, the preexisting conditions and staying on parents insurance until 26 provisions. He said they sounded like very good ideas! Trump is very persuadable and not too knowledgeable, so I got this thought that maybe Obama worked some of his magic on him and Obama will become a confidant and maybe even an inspiration to him. He's going to need a friend who understands the pressures of the presidency, and past presidents have become very close friends. Since Trump has been a Democrat in the past and contributed to their elections, wouldn't it be great if Obama became very influential to Trump, at least in some areas? Lol! Obama is smart and would not squander this opportunity to get the ear of his successor. Maybe there's hope for us yet!

It is a bit scary for all of us but I'm thinking this could be good.

Congratulations!

(A neighbor 'kid' is on the transition team. I'll stop with that.)

Good luck to the new President.

ML

Mayflower, Trump said on the campaign trail that he wanted to keep the preexisting condition part.

However, I'm glad he is open to speaking to all. Excluding Harry Reid many on the left has now held out the olive branch.

I'm telling you... a Trump presidency might not be so bad.

Beagles, I worry about the court nominees most of all. I am not looking to argue with you just want to understand other points of view, what are you hoping for in his nominations? I respect and trust your legal expertise and your calm rational. Thanks.

I loved scalia's judicial discipline even if I did not appreciate his rulings. I think that is why he and Ginsberg were such great friends. I appreciate your views of what constitutes a great pick. I am still undecided how the constitution should be interpreted, I tend to think it was meant to be fluid but that might just be so it can mesh with my ideals. Thanks!

This is a breath of fresh air! Thanks for starting an upbeat thread!

It is time to move forward, hard to do with all the protest and anger going on around us.

I'm raising my glass to be optimistic about the future. Cheers!

How refreshing!! Thank-you!

President elect Trump might not have been my first choice BUT I would have voted against Hillary no matter who was running against her. Her baggage was just too heavy to be returned to the White House, so I am relieved she will not be moving back in. I believe President elect Trump truly loves this country and will do his best for all of us. What we do now is wait and see, just like we did with obama.

I am still undecided how the constitution should be interpreted, I tend to think it was meant to be fluid but that might just be so it can mesh with my ideals.

The issue I would point out is, if it is fluid, interpretation is up to the whims of whomever happens to be on the court at the particular time.

So, this approach might mesh nicely with your ideals so long as justices are appointed who want to interpret the constitution in such a way that it supports progressive goals (or whatever your particular ideals are, just using this as an example).

HOWEVER if for example an authoritarian or far right president were to put many judges on the court who interpret the constitution as a fluid document and who can read into it whatever they think it says, you might not be so happy about it then.

If a justice reads and interprets the constitution based on the plain language, there is far less risk if the court falls into whatever you define as the "wrong" hands. Just something to think about :)

LisaD- it is most gracious of you to start this thread. ( I have to admit I was dreading reading it, thinking it would be chock full of snark. ---- I was totally wrong ).

I'm feeling optimistic and I feel change in the air that will benefit all of us.

Thank you! This is a beyond gracious thread.

I will be the first to admit that I live a privileged lifestyle. I am blessed and thankful. However, I see the struggles of low income Americans daily. I know they are far from deplorables. They are just as smart, hard working and have the same dreams for their families as the rest of us. They are the ones who are disproportionately sending their children to war (my husband is in military). They are not better off than they were 8 years ago. I pray that with a new administration this will change.

Hillary's statement about the basket of deplorables was never quoted in context by Fox. One thing I would do to help heal the country is to send this quote to every Trump voter who only watches Fox News. She also gave a speech on the tarmac in front of her plane in August where she talked about the fringe elements that Trump had awakened, and that is clearly who she meant by deplorables. Not your hard-working neighbor.

"I know there are only 60 days left to make our case -- and don't get complacent, don't see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, well, he's done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."

"But the other basket -- and I know this because I see friends from all over America here -- I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas -- as well as, you know, New York and California -- but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

More on the speech and her apology here:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/context-hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables/

I think his softening on some aspects of Obamacare is encouraging. I do think this issue is at the top of the federal govt (as well as my state govt) list of problems that have to be resolved. There seems to be some recognition, not only by Trump, that enough good has come out of it that you can't just scrap it. It seems that a willingness to compromise might help actually get something done. Hopefully that will prevail with the president and congress.

That should uplift those suffering from grief and depression related to the election outcome. Another reason to think positive.

Beagles, when you say you want someone "who interprets the constitution as the constitution, based on its plain language", do you mean as it was originally written or including the amendments? I think you also say you want to protect the amendments, but to me, the very fact we have had to add amendments means the document as originally written was either not complete or interpretations had changed. To me this implies this has always been a living document. Otherwise I still would not have the right to vote. So, and, I am asking sincerely, I know you are more well read than I on this, was exactly does your comment mean?

I have always understood the role of the Supreme Court to be one of ruling on the constitutionality of laws that are passed by the legislative branch. The amendments to the constitution to me represent the combined force of all branches needed to make major social changes. I still hope to see an amendment to protect some of the freedoms that have been granted by Supreme Court interpretation in recent years. If it can't be codified in to law for the entire nation, then it is always at risk of political interpretation.

The amendments are now a part of the constitution, so of course they should be included in interpreting the constitution and enforcing its protections.

However, I believe the constitution (including the amendments) needs to be read based on the plain language of the constitution, based on what the words of the constitution clearly mean in light of the text and historical record.

The constitution should not be read in light of what the judges think is good at the time. The guarantees of rights should not ever change to be either expanded or curtailed (unless amended) and the plain language should not be contorted to create "rights" which the founders did not intend nor to abridge rights which the founders intended.

The court should not be ushering in social change (no matter how good that change is), as this places FAR too much power in 9 unelected judges and it also makes those so-called constitutional rights fragile to changing whims of the court. Social progress should come from winning hearts and minds, which in turn can cause legislatures to change laws or can lead to amendments (which would then become a part of the constitution).

Of course the constitution has to evolve and change. However, there is a difference between going through the process of adding amendments (which is a complicated process for a reason) and having 9 unelected and unaccountable people suddenly make up a right out of whole cloth.

You can look at the commerce clause as an example. It says the federal government has the power to regulate commerce between the states. That is ALL it should mean, but it has been dramatically expanded to permit the federal government to weigh in on just about everything in life.

For another example, while I personally am strongly in favor of gay marriage and abortion, these are not constitutional rights because the constitution says nothing about these rights (neither prohibiting nor guaranteeing). Perhaps they should be constitutional rights (actually, I think the government should completely stay out of regulating abortion other than as necessary to ensure the safety of clinics, and the state should have no involvement in sanctioning any marriages, gay or straight) but if they should be rights, then this should be done through the amendment process.

If you want to learn more, you can look up originalism or read about Scalia's judicial philosophy:

http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2010_spr/scalia.htm

Lawyers “are not trained to be moral philosophers,” which is what it takes to determine whether there should be a right to abortion or assisted suicide. “History is a rock-solid science compared to moral philosophy,” Scalia said.

“All these questions pose enormous difficulty for non-originalists, who must agonize over what the modern Constitution ought to mean with regard to each of these subjects, and then agonize over the very same questions five or 10 years later, because times change,” he said.

During the last assisted suicide case, a majority of the court said it was “not prepared” to announce a constitutional right to what at the time was universally criminalized conduct.

“Stay tuned,” Scalia said.

Similarly, in the course of 16 years, the court changed its decision that juvenile capital punishment was permissible and declared it cruel and unusual punishment.

Originalism is not a guarantee against judicial abuse, Scalia admitted.

“But originalism does not invite him to make the law what he thinks it should be, nor does it permit him to distort history with impunity,” he said. The honest originalist will sometimes or often reach results he does not personally favor. “All of this cannot be said of the constitutional consequentialists.

The Constitution says "right to bear arms," it does not specify or limit "arms" to "only arms existing now." By it's plain meaning, people have a right to bear all sorts of arms. It is an abridgment of that right to invent out of nowhere limits on which arms a person has a right to bear. Don't forget, at the time, a musket was military-grade advanced weaponry and people were allowed to own them.

Following

I am one of the people who is living with a pit of fear in my stomach as a result of this election.

Some of the
kindest, most generous, caring people I know are Republicans. So every time
one of my far left liberal friends posts something calling everyone who
voted for Trump an uneducated racist, my heart aches for those people I
know voted for him who are none of those things.

I also have friends on the right blaming "liberals" for the rioting, saying liberals are a
bunch a whiny losers, acting like a kid who didn't get a cookie.

Anyone who thinks there wouldn't have been
riots if Trump lost is living in a fantasy land. There is a small
subgroup of morons who will use any excuse they can find to riot. This
is a function of the dark side of humanity, not politics (in my opinion). I don't blame liberals for the riots any more than I blame conservatives for the KKK endorsement. We have extremism in both parties.

I feel like I'm surrounded by hate on all sides, coming from both sides. It's breaking my heart.

So even though I'm personally terrified of this outcome....I'm in for a thread that talks about the positive possibilities. My heart needs a break.

I'm hoping president Obama attempts to calm the protesters/rioters at 3:15 today.

Another question for Beagles. Maybe partly flippant, but mostly curious. In Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, it authorizes an Army and a Navy. Of course no Air Force because who could conceive of that. So if I read the constitution as it is written, should the Air Force have required an amendment?

This question actually has been addressed :)

There's a number of theories on why the Air Force is constitutionally permissible with no amendment under an originalist interpretation.

For example, many site the necessary and proper clause. If it is important for the military today to have an independent air force AND as the creation of an air force does not infringe on separation of powers or other constitutional protections, the creation of an air force could be justified under Article I, even absent an amendment.

Others argue an air force is comprehended in the constitutional term ‘armies.'

As someone strongly opposed to expansion of government powers not expressly granted by the constitution, however, I would prefer that air forces are organized as a PART of the Army and Navy, as during WWII, unless or until an amendment authorizes the creation of a separate air force.

Thank you Beagles for your answers. :)