Rieds got the right idea.
Reid's got the right idea. Courtesy of United States Senate

This morning Harry Reid released some of the strongest language about Trump that I've seen from a sitting Senator so far:

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.

If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately."

Yesterday, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—two politicians whose no-bullshit rhetoric helped energize millions of progressives—released hedged, tepid, conciliatory statements that said they were willing to work with Trump insofar as he's serious about helping the working poor.

That kind of "give Trump a chance" thinking is a little too Christian for me. It allows Trump more credit than he could possibly deserve, and it suggests an impossible and inadvisable future. Trump isn't going to work with Democrats. (Trump might not even work with Republicans.) Republicans aren't going to work with Democrats.

Reid's statement is the right model for Democratic senators who have no power now and won't have power for probably the next six years. Listen to what your constituents most vulnerable to hate and violence are saying, believe them, tell their stories, and don't for a second start normalizing the election of a freakishly underprepared, bigoted president who mobilized and normalized scores of white nationalists.