SHE WON

And WHY IT MATTERS

I see stories that say: We can't get over it. She lost. Women lost.

But I think they miss the point. Okay, so it is a lot about who eventually gets to be president.

But it's also about who won. And SHE won. For the first time in history, a woman won the popular vote. A WOMAN got the most votes.

Of course, I care about who becomes president.

But the inspiration of the campaign itself doesn't fade. I'm still inspired by the pantsuit flashmob, by the elderly ladies proudly wearing their pantsuits to vote, by the little girls who said: She can be president. Yes, I can be president.

Policy matters. Who gets to sit in the White House matters. To some extent.

But, to some extent, who emerges victorious isn't about who gets the White House. It's about who got the most votes. Because it's about who won the hearts and minds of the people, not who emerged victorious in the white man system that was invented before black men could vote, before women could vote.

Could Alexander Hamilton have predicted a black president? Would he have approved? If not, does it really matter?

History is about understanding the past, but not repeating it like a bunch of rote Civil War enactors.

When I think about this election, yes, I may never be able to drink Wendy's lemonade again because that's what I ordered on the night we got the awful baffling results, the night where Donald Trump gave his victory speech. Not what we were supposed to hear. WE thought SHE was ahead. WE thought HE didn't have a chance.

But she won the popular vote. And everywhere all around people are taking pictures with her that are going viral. Like this one below.



Meanwhile: According to rumor and published media reports, Trump can't find anyone who wants to play his inauguration.

And people are threatening to boycott his brand. There's even an app for it now.

I don't think that that was quite what Donald Trump had in mind when he thought of winning. Meanwhile, we're subjected to the sad tweets of a sad man who overuses the word sad and the exclamation mark and makes me wonder what it will take for someone to teach him to make the sentence great again or at least not nails on the chalkboard bad.

When we think about class, who do we think about? Do we think about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Donald Trump has embarrassed himself over and over again. The mockeries and scandals are too many to name, and I don't particularly want to relive the ugliness.

Maybe we're stuck with him. BUT HE DID not win. And his brand of hate and lies and misogyny and his blatant, pathetic appeal to fear will never win. It may seem to triumph in the short run, but, in, the long run #LoveTrumpsHate and Hope Trumps Fear, and we truly are stronger together. And, yes, I am #StillWithHer.

Now and always. Whoever occupies the White House, SHE WON.

Where do we go from here?

There have been days when I've woken up and thought: This did not happen. THIS cannot be reality and days when I've thought: How do we live here, like this?

In a country that chose hate over love?

Fear over hope?

Division over unity?

One of Hillary's slogans was "Stronger Together" and I believe that's true.

I believe this writer gets it right when she says that Hillary Clinton's campaign was a campaign that attempted to look and move forward while others wanted to look to the past, to what people have lost.

Yes, jobs have declined in some industries like coal and steel. I'm from Pittsburgh, so I know all about what it's like for an industrial city to die, but, fortunately, I also know what it's like for a city to be reborn.

Pittsburgh is called a Renaissance city because there are jobs there. It's a great place to live and raise kids, and it's not covered in a cloud of smog like it once was.

We can't go back to the days of unrelenting pollution, unchecked discrimination, and civilized, normalized hate.

We can't tell our neighbors to "go back to where they came from" unless we plan to do that as well.

Many have noted that all of us came from somewhere. The only people who can even attempt to claim that this land is their land is Native Americans, and what have we done but taken that land away from them.

Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp," but from where I'm sitting all I see is someone who is making the swamp viler and more nasty.

We can't do everything. We can't fight racism and oppression and resist everything and fight 24/7 without making a living and caring for ourselves. But we can control how we respond.

As Michelle Obama said, "When they go low, we go high."



I'll admit that there are times when I haven't felt like going high. When I didn't like being called bossy or the other b word or stupid by someone who couldn't form a grammatically correct sentence.

But what I see is that these people are insecure and insensitive. All they have is name calling, sometimes as a substitute for logic. Those of us who have ever taught freshman competition know that while people can be swayed by fear, you don't WIN with fear.

And what is winning? Winning is being Hillary Clinton, who could have gone lower but instead tried to inspire us to be the nation that is united not divided by class and race.

So what do I say to my misguided brother or sister who voted for Trump? I look to John Wesley, who said:



It was a quote that inspired Methodist Hillary Clinton. When people said she was a murderer, a criminal, and wanted to "lock her up" for the crime of daring to be a woman who dreamed and hoped for a better future for us all, she could have retired.

She was already a successful lawyer, senator, author, speaker, and Secretary of State, she didn't need to be president, but America needed a strong tough leader like Hillary Clinton who wanted to move us forward. We still need one.

The leader we are apparently about to get is not the leader we need. He will not bring back jobs to the miners in West Virginia or the industrial workers in Ohio. His agenda won't make anything better.

So where do we go from here? We don't wade in the swamp water to prove that we can. Yes, we can insult and hate and blame, but where does that take us? It doesn't make us stronger. It does no one good.

To move forward, we need to look to Hillary Clinton, one of the only winners in a sea of losers. She is what makes me proud to be an American.