'This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what's right is worth it. It is worth it'
Women have always been last. At least metaphorically.
Perhaps that began with Eve - created last, and all. Then there was Abraham, who so craved a son that his wife gave him her handmaiden. And how many wives did King Henry VIII go through looking to have a son to succeed him?
In America, men freed from slavery gained the right to vote in 1870, but it would be 50 more years until - in 1920 - our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers could finally cast a ballot.
Incredibly, it wasn't until 1973 that women were allowed to serve on juries in all 50 states. Can you imagine being a woman charged with striking or killing a domestic abuser and being tried by an all-male jury?
Now, here we are in 2016, and as a country we have again put a woman last.
It's true that Hillary Clinton was the first woman ever elected to become the presidential nominee of a major party.
It's also true that she was the first woman - and the only candidate in this race - to win America's popular vote to be president.
But Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States when he won the Electoral College vote. Thus Clinton - for a second time - became America's bridesmaid.
History was made. But not for her. And not for women.
In America, women will be last for a while longer.
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Millions of Americans felt their eyes tear Wednesday as Clinton made her concession speech in a ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel - not beneath the highly symbolic glass ceiling of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center where she had planned to make a victory speech.
The night before, beneath that glass ceiling, aides and supporters had iced champagne glasses and hung pink "It's a Girl" balloons, according to The New York Times. Some supporters cast their ballots in costume, wearing their grandmothers' brooches, Hillary-style pantsuits, or white to honor women suffrage fighters.
Annalisa Merelli wrote in Quartz, a digital news publication, that Clinton's election would have been "a no-brainer" had she been a man.
She was the single most-qualified candidate in recent memory, and her opponent was "almost unpresentable" with a "profound lack of decency and respect - for women, for minorities, for people with disabilities, you name it."
"Had she been a man, there would have been no questions about her likability. Had she been a man, the scrutiny of the many years of her public service would have focused on her outstanding list of accomplishments, and not focused on the things she got wrong," Merelli noted.
The writer has a point. Clinton was persecuted over using a personal email account and server, something Colin Powell did with impunity. And she was roundly chided by conservative pundits for calling half of Trump's supporters - the white supremacists in particular - "a basket of deplorables."
Meanwhile Trump rarely let a day go by without calling someone a "bimbo," "pig," "lyin'," crooked," and words that can't be published in a family newspaper. His sexist tendencies are legendary, and one young supporter shocked by the election result tweeted: "People ask why women don't report sexual assault. You got your answer: a man can have double-digit accusers & still be elected president."
Clinton herself didn't make a big deal of being a woman, but she didn't stand deliberately away from it in this campaign as she had in 2008 when she ran against Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary. She knew focus groups had found that most women don't respond well to "woman candidate" talk.
Trump knew it, too, so he made it an issue early on, claiming she was "playing the woman card," pretty much any time she said something he didn't have an good canned answer for - like equal pay for equal work or family leave. She would always smile and say that if talking about fair pay and family values or the issue de jour "is playing the woman card, then deal me in."
No one was more keenly aware of supporters' Election Day "woman's card" tears and shattered dreams than the disappointed candidate.
After noting her congratulations to Trump Wednesday and saying she hopes he will be "a successful president for all Americans," she turned her attention to that figurative glass ceiling pain.
"To all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion. I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will - and hopefully sooner than we might think right now."
She continued.
"And to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams."
We're with her.