Jesse Lee stands among White House staff meeting with President Obama the morning after the 2016 election.

For eight years I had the indescribable honor of serving in President Obama's White House, most recently as Special Assistant to the President & Director of Rapid Response. I played a lot of different roles, but going back through the 2008 transition and even back to the DNC during that campaign, I've served as a nexus between the White House and progressive advocates, bloggers, journalists, and pundits—I thought it might be worth sharing some of my perspective publicly with any progressive that cares to read it.

First and foremost: I say in all honesty that very little would have gotten done without you, and it’s become even more clear to me in these final days that your constructive criticism/pushing/occasional outrage helped make this White House a better White House, and this president a better president.

Looking forward, as bleak a moment as this is in many ways, I’m optimistic for the future of progressives and the Democratic Party. As contentious as things can sometimes seem within our side, I think there’s remarkable consensus on the kind of progressive change we need, captured in great detail through the hard work of the unified Democratic platform. I think a lot of the goals we had coming into 2009 have seen immense measurable accomplishment, more so than virtually any pundit would have thought possible at the time. On so many issues, progressives and President Obama have helped move the Overton window in the right direction (take some time to reflect on political conventional wisdom in 2008 and I think you’ll agree).

But part of progress is having to defend that progress, sooner or later, with your back against the wall. That time came sooner than expected, but it was always going to come. And reversing it is going to be a lot harder than Republicans advertised, because the benefits are just so damned real.

As we all continue to grapple with the election's aftermath, there’s one critique that I’ve heard from the media, from some supporters of the incoming administration, and from some folks on the left who I truly respect, that I want to take on—namely that the Democratic Party and/or Obama “didn’t fight for working people.”

That I can't abide.