As we begin to digest the 2016 election results, let me begin with our successes.

First, I want to congratulate Denver voters on our 80 percent turnout, which is outstanding. I also want to congratulate Emmy Ruiz for running a great campaign in Colorado for Hillary Clinton. She helped make Colorado blue and bring Hillary our vote. Emmy was calm throughout the campaign, met with everyone she needed to and kept focus. It’s unfortunate we didn’t have more people like her nationwide.

I’m also glad Denver and metro voters endorsed continuing the tax on the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District along with the Denver Public Schools bond proposal. Additionally, it was gratifying voters statewide understood the need to protect our Constitution and endorsed Amendment 71.

I am asthmatic and a nonsmoker but the proposed tobacco tax was a blank check to government, and voters saw that and rightly rejected Amendment 72.

I’m also thrilled Colorado voters saw the need to help working people and increased the minimum wage, although I think $15 an hour is where we need to be now to help working people pay daily expenses.

While I did not endorse the universal health care proposal for Colorado in Amendment 69, I do think we will be forced to revisit this sooner than later because the national Affordable Care Act likely will be gutted by the new administration.

The Democrat races in Denver went as expected because the only races in Denver that are partisan are primaries. I was on the state Reapportionment Commission Committee, which took my lead on drawing Denver districts, and these should be good for 10 years.

Congratulations to the RTD directors who I hope will soon help to resolve the issues with the light rail line to Denver International Airport.

Other congratulations to our congressional winners: Sen. Michael Bennet and Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis. Yet, I am saddened there wasn’t more support for state Sen. Morgan Carroll in the 6th Congressional District. Democrats need to grow our numbers to take Arapahoe, Adams, Jefferson and Larimer counties. Boulder will be Boulder.

Now I turn to the more disappointing presidential election result. As one person said, Hillary supporters were expecting to attend a wedding on election night and in the end it felt like a funeral. However, I will support President-elect Trump out of respect for the office. But I also will continue to oppose any of his policies that I believe negatively impact our country as I have done throughout my life, whether it was the Vietnam War, Iraq War, the U.S. doing business when apartheid was in South Africa or any discrimination against any group or individuals.

I’m sure with the likes of Republicans Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani being Trump’s advisers, we all will have plenty of issues to disagree on in the new administration.

Despite Hillary’s loss, we must fight to preserve the history and legacy of President Barack Obama as our nation’s first African-American president. Some of us will feel that responsibility more than others, but it must be done.

The vote reflects an anti-Hillary and anti-Obama sentiment and many segments of our country want their legacies wiped out and forgotten. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell set the tone after the 2008 election when he said Republicans would fight Obama from day one and they did. The Republicans also helped pass laws that suppressed the vote in many segments of our country.

While Hillary got support from many white voters there’s no denying that a majority of white voters – many uneducated men – elected Trump. We are seeing this “white backlash” worldwide with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and Columbians denying a peace agreement with bandits which has been needed for decades. The “white backlash” is threatened by black, Latino, LGBT members and college-educated women having a larger voice and holding political offices.

But as the postelection results show, too many white women of all economic, religious and educational levels also failed to support Hillary without truly understanding the discrimination they face not only from Trump but Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Many of these women are Evangelicals, which as a group also overwhelmingly support Trump. She garnered the most female votes from the black and Latino communities.

Until women support women there never will be a woman president.

But let’s also face the fact that some Americans will never vote for a woman to be mayor or governor let alone president. They believe, whether through religious leaders or others, that top leaders should be men. Although, I know that someday Denver – which I’m happy to say is a progressive city – will have a female mayor.

There will be soul searching among many white women voters, and other blocks of voters who either didn’t vote for her or who didn’t vote at all. There also needs to be some soul-searching among the national media.

Journalists and the pollsters they often quote have had to admit they dropped the ball and helped create Trump the candidate. In the beginning, they covered Trump as entertainment news splashing his outrageous quotes and lies in 24-hour news cycles. It was a game with few thinking Trump would last through the primaries.

It wasn’t until a few months before the election that they started doing their job as political reporters and finally looking into Trump’s ties to Russia, his lack of paying federal income taxes and his sexist treatment of women – which by the way was leaked to the media; a reporter didn’t dig up that dirt. By this time the “Reality Star” Trump had wormed his way into the psyche of voters who actually believed all of his promises and outrageous lies.

In a time when pop culture sets the tone for Americans, more voters related to Trump than an experienced politician who had paid her dues. He hit upon a nerve when he said established politicians didn’t understand the common folk, many who face economic and social problems. Hillary’s message to the working class was missing, which Bill Clinton emphasized. Trump’s data analysis was better than ours and this is something we need to address. And while black women supported Hillary, there was an absence of including black men from transition to key decisions and a specific plan. Feeling left out lost many black male votes.

Every group needs to feel they matter and are part of the process, or they’ll lose interest or become apathetic.

No wonder the polls were wrong. People were embarrassed to say they were voting for Trump, but they still cast their ballots for him. Were these votes for Trump, or votes of protest and anger for having lost their jobs and their hope in the federal government? Were they votes for Trump or votes of protest against the so-called Washington establishment and a paralyzed, divided Congress?

Postelection polls also show the impact of FBI Director James Comey’s reopening the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private emails just 11 days before the election. This issue, which cleared Hillary in July, renewed Trump’s false claims that laws had been broken. Despite Comey’s announcement two days before the election that once again clear Hillary of any wrongdoing, the damage was already done. Many voters already confused and inundated with trust issues said the emails swayed their vote to Trump.

Bloomberg had the best analysis that I have read to date. It said Hillary counted on Obama’s coalition of suburban women, young adults, black and Latino voters who would be eager to make history twice. She didn’t try to flip Trump voters because she thought they were part of the shrinking, dying Republican base.

Her support from Beyonce, Jay Z, Lebron James and similar celebrities got flipped back on her when Trump said if she was with them she couldn’t be with the common voters. One telling scene is that the night of a celebrity concert in Philadelphia with Hillary, miles away Trump packed a hockey arena without any celebrity endorsements.

Finally, no one can ignore the fact that millions of voters sat out this election. We lost 6 million voters compared to the 2012 election. Whether that was out of apathy or disgust, it made a difference we all have to live with.

I also would ask Bernie Sanders’ supporters who never got over the bitterness of the primaries and wrote in “Uncle Bernie” or didn’t vote, are you happy about the outcome? I know the primary loss was hard to take but in 2008, Hillary Clinton supporters put all of their energy into electing President Obama. If we wouldn’t have, that may have been a different outcome as well.

The game of politics is about who is voting. If we learn no other lesson from this election we must find a way to get more people involved. There are no excuses.

In closing, Hillary put it best when she said that if you believe in something good and the outcome isn’t what you hoped, the journey is still worth it.

Our journey continues. We can never sit on the sidelines if we want real change to make life better for future generations of Americans.

So how do we move forward? The Democratic National Committee needs to place an emphasis on building our state parties and state legislative majorities, which is the breeding ground for future statewide and congressional elections, mayors, governors and senators.

We have to continue to work the South because so much of that race is not Democrat or Republican; it’s still black versus white as it has been since post Lyndon Johnson. Only younger voters tend to cross over, but those numbers are too small.

Protesting is not enough; it has to be protesting with an implementation plan. Otherwise, Trump and his staff will disregard and laugh at protestors who protest without a plan for change.

Not surprisingly, headlines are now blaring that the Democratic Party is dead or dying. No, we’re not dying or dead. We got bruised and some people will say we got sucker punched. But bruises heal and the majority of us are up and ready to fight again.

The zeitgeist and volksgeist have aligned and the question is, can we keep this alignment together for 2018.