A Note of Gratitude

Millions of Americans woke up on Wednesday morning with heavy hearts.

This has been a long and bruising presidential election. And through it all, Hillary Clinton never wavered from her belief that we are stronger together. That we must choose hope over fear. A belief in unity over division.

Those beliefs are hallmarks of this party. A party of the people. They will continue to define us as we look toward the vital work ahead as we come together as Democrats.

But right now, I want simply to say thank you.

Your energy, your passion, your devotion — you poured it all into this election. Tuesday night may not have gone the way we wanted it to, but the results were ultimately as close as they were because you did your part, talked to your friends and neighbors, cast your ballot, and made your voice heard. And because of that, we still won some important victories. We’ll have four new Democratic women in the Senate, including our first Latina senator, and we tore down a Senate color barrier that has stood in California since its founding.

As Democrats, this is what we do. We don’t believe in simply electing someone to give us the country we want to live in. We believe in creating it.

We stood together in this election. We united around the most progressive platform in our party’s history — a platform dedicated to raising wages, combatting student debt, ensuring Wall Street and billionaires pay their fair share, tackling climate change, fixing our broken immigration system, achieving equal pay for women, reforming our criminal justice system, expanding access to the ballot, reducing the influence of money in our democracy, investing in our children and families, and standing up against bigotry and hatred.

And while the road ahead of us is going to be a difficult one, I want to make one thing perfectly clear to you, to the other side, and to the whole world:

We aren’t backing down. We’re going to take time to heal in our communities — and then we are going to keep fighting for what we believe in harder now than ever before.

We’re Democrats, and that means we don’t quit. We get back up. We dust ourselves off and continue, without fanfare, that vital work of organizing and fixing and building on this imperfect union of ours.

We urge President-elect Trump to put aside the divisive rhetoric that guided his campaign and stick to his victory speech pledge to unite the country. We promised to work alongside him to strive in good faith to bridge our deep political divides in service to our one United States of America.

But there should be no doubt that we will also hold the new administration accountable and, working with responsible Republicans, ensure that the dangerous campaign policies and rhetoric offered by President-elect Trump are not normalized.

This is what we do. Not just as Democrats — but as Americans.

We’ll be in touch in the days to come with concrete ways to get involved in the work we’ll do together.

We are, and always will be, stronger together. Let’s get to work.