Colorado Democrats celebrated sweeping wins across the state on Tuesday night at a hotel in downtown Denver, but the election-night watch party felt more like a wake as the national map on large-screen televisions slowly turned more and more red, depicting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Clinton carried the state’s nine electoral votes – marking the third time running a Democrat has won Colorado – and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet won a second full term over El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, but except for a brief celebratory moment at around 10:30 p.m. when Bennet rallied the crowd, the cheers came few and far between.

“We did our part to give our electoral votes to Hillary, we re-elected Michael Bennet, and we kept the state House,” Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio told The Colorado Statesman about a half hour after Bennet had taken the stage, while several states remained too close to call and Trump had not yet been declared the winner. “The rest of the country didn’t work as hard as we did, so we’re stuck in a situation that doesn’t look so good at this point.”

Mustering a smile, he added, “Democrats, people throughout the state made their voices heard that Donald Trump is not the guy for us. If he is elected, he will be our president, and we’ll make sure we hold him accountable every step of the way.”

Clinton won Colorado by about 50,000 votes, amounting to a 2-point margin over Trump, according to preliminary, unofficial results posted by the Colorado secretary of state, and Bennet prevailed by about 75,000 votes, or roughly 3 points, both results much closer than months’ worth of polling had shown.

But on a night when Trump’s last-minute slogan, “Drain the swamp!” echoed across the country, voters returned every member of Colorado’s congressional delegation to office by wide margins. Two Republicans, U.S. Reps. Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton, easily survived well-funded challengers, state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and former state Sen. Gail Schwartz, respectively. Coffman defeated Carroll by 9 points, equaling the margin he racked up against former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in the Republican wave of 2014, and Tipton led by 14 points.

“This election, like the one before it – our side was badly outspent on TV,” Coffman told a crowd of Republicans gathered at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Denver Tech Center in Greenwood Village. “And so what? We took care of business, we made our case, and we turned out our vote in an unprecedented way.”

After praising his campaign team’s massive field operation, Coffman added, “We won tonight not just because of our ability to run a tough campaign. We won tonight because our message is right. We must continue to talk about growing our economy, creating jobs and economic opportunities, and seeking common sense solutions to the problems facing our nation.”

Touting his record of “rising above dysfunction in Washington to find bi-partisan solutions to everyday problems,” Tipton said in a statement on Wednesday morning that he looked forward to serving another term and fighting for his district.

“In my next term, my No. 1 priority will be creating economic opportunities for all Coloradans,” Tipton said. “Our economic recovery has largely been concentrated to the Front Range and I will continue to fight for solutions to create equitable growth that spreads into Southern and Western Colorado.”

“There is still much work to be done and I look forward to getting back to work serving the people of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District,” he added.

As the night wore on, and more states teetered and fell to Trump, the mood at the Westin Denver Downtown turned more grim, and Democrats appeared mostly stunned, a weariness overtaking the crowd, shoulders slumping and faces lifting reluctantly to view the latest updates from CNN.

Addressing reporters after he had introduced Bennet, his former chief of staff, to the crowd, Gov. John Hickenlooper displayed his trademark grin, albeit a bit strained under the lights.

“Whoever wins has got to bring the country together,” he said. “We cannot continue having half the country hating the other half, unwilling to work together, unwilling to talk to each other. Whoever wins has a steep hill to climb.”

In a room off to the side reserved by Emerge Colorado, an organization devoted to electing women to public office, numerous women wearing pink T-shirts were among those milling around with stunned expressions on their faces.

“Colorado continues to be a place of people who really get it and respect each other,” said Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains CEO Vicki Cowart.

Noting that she’d spent recent weeks walking neighborhoods to support candidates backed by Planned Parenthood’s political arm, Cowart shook her head.

“People were so responsive, wanting to support women, wanting to support candidates who believe that people are individuals who deserve respect and freedom. The state went for Hillary and Michael, and a couple of the state races that are really important to us,” she said, citing the Senate District 19 race where Democrat Rachel Zenzinger unseated state Sen. Laura Woods and the House District 30 race where Dafna Michaelson Jenet defeated state Rep. Joann Windholz.

“Those are places where they were running against people who really had some vitriol, and they’re doing OK,” Cowart maintained.

Then, turning her attention to the TV, where news anchors had just declared another state moved into Trump’s column, Cowart stopped for a moment and marveled at the news. “This country needs a leader like Hillary, and it’s kind of terrifying to see what’s happening out there.”

“Colorado,” she added, “appears to be a pocket of sanity.”

It was a point Bennet made addressing the hundreds of Democrats who cheered his win.

“You live in the most dynamic and beautiful state in the United States of America,” he said, before thanking his family and campaign staffers and offering congratulations to Glenn.

Then, turning his focus to the national election, Glenn called on the crowd to quiet their cheers. Invoking Benjamin Franklin’s famous line that the Founding Fathers had created “a republic, if you can keep it,” Bennet observed that Franklin’s contemporaries would probably be surprised that their experiment still endured more than two centuries later.

“Now it falls on us to keep it,” Bennet said. “And to do that, we need to admit something to ourselves. People all over Colorado understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with national politics and how we are governing our country. They are right, and it has to change. Here in Colorado, we reject dysfunction as normal, the idea that Republicans and Democrats can’t work together.”

Washington, he said, has a lot to learn from Colorado.

“So tonight I commit to you that I will work with our governor and our congressional delegation, no matter how any of these races turn out, to look for every opportunity to reach across the aisle for the benefit of our state, and to establish a model for every other state and delegation in the union,” he continued. “I would also ask our leaders in Washington to understand that politics should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is preservation of the republic for the next generation of Americans and governing in a way to satisfy the concerns of all Americans.”

Then, Bennet called on politicians of all stripes to operate with self-restraint and mutual respect.

“We have to lift our gaze a little and consider a timeline longer than the moments between the commercial breaks on cable TV, or even the next election,” he said. “And just as we reject the corrosiveness of today’s politics, we must reject the dark money resulting from Citizen’s United, both of which are cancers striking at the heart of our democracy and threatening to tear us apart.”