The Commercial Appeal

Give Trump voters time to let go of election

- Raina Fisher is a freelance writer, psychologi­st and child activist who lives in Paris, Tennessee. Your Turn Raina Fisher Guest columnist

Election Day may be over, but we can thank President Donald Trump for turning out the vote.

Yet it seems we have come to a fork in the road. The causes and effects do matter. Since uncertaint­y breeds mistrust, sunlight is a must.

It isn’t just a matter of one candidate winning. What’s germane is that we all agree.

So if all the states’ electors haven’t cast their votes, then Joe Biden isn’t the president-elect. He should thank Trump for going the extra mile to ensure this election has integrity.

It will lend him legitimacy. It’s a cause for patriotic celebratio­n, not a partisan duel.

The 2020 election provides a lesson on empathy

There will be ample time for analysis. That said, this is no mandate. It does beg the question of how we heal as a nation if one side tells the other to suck it up. I sense this is how Hillary Clinton’s voters must have felt. The lesson of empathy can be painful.

While I didn’t vote for Biden and Kamala Harris, as a woman who just cast her first ballot, I can’t deny the historic scale of the first woman being elected vice president — and in the year marking the 100th anniversar­y of women being able to vote in America, no less.

All the same, Biden and his ilk push for the Trump team to join hands with those who slapped their faces for years.

This is part and parcel of what some deign to be abuse and what a lack of insight and empathy this shows on their part.

Listen to the voters before the pundits and the pollsters

It is laudable to be a noble loser, but at the same time, one can argue the merit in being a gracious winner as well.

Be that as it may, in this case there are 74 million Americans who wait to name a victor. At the end of the day, the people — not the pundits and pollsters — are who lost the most. We should congratula­te Biden if the votes come out in his favor. In the same vein, will Americans who voted for him stand with Trump if he winds up with a second term? It’s possible. But after he was elected in 2016, they protested, impeached him — trying to disenfranc­hise 63 million voters — and called him illegitima­te.

If he doesn’t win, then he can come back in four years to run again.

Civility, like a coin, has two sides. A demand to concede bulldozes the high ground. What’s more, loss comes with the need to grieve. And with all Democrats did to this man, his family and his voters, Trump supporters earned the right to have time to let go.

For the time being, there is a chain of custody to follow. Biden doesn’t want a dark cloud of doubt to loom over him. He has the chance to be presidenti­al, or he can look as if he has something to hide.

Win, lose or draw, Trump left nothing on the field. He cracked the system wide open, shined a beam on mainstream media bias and let us in to see the swamp is an abyss.

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