1. “Her campaign was flawed.” Maybe it’s time to redefine what a “flawed campaign” really means, because her campaign was great, and nowhere nearly as “flawed” as Trump’s. Do not forget that when Trump’s campaign began, with the absurd scene of him descending the escalator of his decrepit New York tower, “campaign” would have been too generous a word to describe it. It certainly did not function like the kind of campaign pundits and voters expect from modern presidential candidates. He had a tiny staff, little ground game, and the consistent threat of losing support of his party. Instead of relationship mending and setting up offices to organize canvassing, he channeled his energy into staying up late at night to tap out angry, hateful missives on Twitter. His campaign’s apparent missteps along the way were so numerous and odious — from his wife plagiarizing a famous speech by the nation’s beloved first lady to the tape of him bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy” — they should have ruined him many times over. Clinton’s campaign included an impeccable ground game, the support of her party, flawlessly orchestrated campaign events featuring stars like Beyoncé, our president, and our first lady. Sure, her campaign’s slogan, “stronger together,” wasn’t the cleverest, most emotional one the world has ever heard. But “I’m with her” was genius — the perfect hashtag, bumper sticker, and Instagram bio. So don’t try to tell us that this was her fault from the get-go.

2. “But there's a silver lining!” It’s natural, in times of great grief, to look for silver linings. But as anyone who has endured a great tragedy knows, there is not always one. The greater, the more shocking the tragedy, the less likely there is to be a bright side. Optimism isn’t just this thing that you can pluck from some place inside of you with the same ease that Kellyanne Conway tells lies on national television. Because we went into this with so much optimism — optimism that hateful rhetoric wouldn’t win over the American electorate, optimism that centenarian women would witness the inauguration of the first woman president in their lifetimes, optimism that the war waged against women's constitutional right to control their own bodies was finally over. So now, no, I’m not going to be optimistic. I'm going to re-read David Remnick’s essay and resent the doomsday scenario so many of us are now suffering through.

3. “She was a flawed candidate from the beginning.” Firstly, she was the most qualified candidate to ever run for the office of president — a first lady, a senator, a secretary of state. But fine, let’s go with this “she was flawed" narrative for a beat. Let’s unpack that for your sake. Everybody has flaws. Everybody has said something they’re not proud of. Everybody could be better at many aspects of their work. But there was no flaw in her that was worse than any flaw in him. There was not a single thing she said that came anywhere close to being worse than the multitude of ugly, vile things he said. Through service to this country, she has helped many groups of people, from the New York City firemen who needed an advocate after 9/11 to children who needed health care. He has shown interest in helping no one but himself at the expense of anyone who gets in his way. He is the man who said women should receive “some form of punishment” for getting abortions if the procedure was illegal. She is the woman who so famously declared in Beijing more than 20 years ago, “Humans rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” So, don’t tell me she — a woman of principle, experience, and incredible grace — lost because she’s “flawed.”

4. “Trump won’t be so bad.” We’ve gone over, so many times, the vicious remarks he’s made about every group of people in this country and beyond, who are different from his privileged white maleness. These, along with the tweet he posted two days after the election criticizing the media for "inciting protests," provide every reason we need to believe he will be "so bad." But if that’s not enough, let’s also remember that he has been disturbingly vague on what he would actually do as president. Before meeting with President Barack Obama and deciding he might keep parts of the Affordable Care Act , he had merely promised to replace it with “something terrific.” His immigration policy includes building a wall to keep Mexicans out of the country, the man-child politician equivalent of buying a motorcycle in midlife to feel virile (mind you, there are already walls down there). And did you look at the list of people who will be running his transition team? It includes only four women, one of them his own daughter Ivanka, and Marsha Blackburn, a denier of science who believes neither in evolution nor the irrefutable fact that global warming not only exists but is ruining our planet. The leader of this transition team is Mike Pence, the man who signed a law forcing women to have funerals for their miscarried fetuses.

Trump, also, is supposed to take the stand later this month in a fraud trial that is the result of the class-action lawsuit filed against Trump University. His lawyer went to court to ask to delay the trial because Trump is busy getting ready to be president and he’s not sure testifying is “the best use of his time right now.” No sitting president has ever had to take the stand for a fraud trial. So yes, evidence points to this administration being, well, bad.

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5. “We didn't protest like this after Obama won.” You cannot compare Trump and Obama. Obama wasn’t a racist, sexist xenophobe who lied constantly and had no vision for America besides the fact that he needed to assume its highest office to validate his own megalomania. Obama represented progress, Trump represents the depressing regression of that progress. It's also worth noting that after Obama was elected, Trump called for a revolution, perhaps of the very nature of the one thrumming at the doorstep of his New York tower. The call for that revolution came in a tweet that Trump has deleted since winning the election — unsurprising, given that this is a man who views transparency to the people he serves not as an obligation, but something he can opt out of. While Obama was in office, Trump protested his administration not with signs and chants, but by architecting and promoting the birther conspiracy theory.

6. “I feel bad for my wife” or “I feel bad for my sister,” when coming from a white man who does not feel quite so threatened or emotionally damaged by a Trump win. You should feel bad for yourself too. A loss for the women of this country is a loss for the men who love them, along with the children they share. While white men are less likely to be victims of hate crimes and harassment than this nation's women and minorities, they are not likely to benefit much, if at all, from a Trump administration. When Ben Carson, whose understanding of the Declaration of Independence is cursory at best, is being floated as a possible secretary of education, the only rational reaction is to fear for one's children. When Trump has filed for bankruptcy six times and laid off many workers from his own resorts, and is expected to be disastrous for the global economy, we should all feel sorry for ourselves.

7. "Bernie would have won." Bernie was not a perfect candidate either. Impressive, yes, but he had his own serious failings, including his inability to explain what the Fed's role in government is to the New York Daily News, which is certainly puzzling when your biggest initiative includes economic reform. He also is likely to have faced the challenges Clinton faced, including getting her diehard supporters over to his camp. What's more, as even his wife said, even if you do believe in your heart of hearts that Bernie could have won, it doesn't matter now. Donald Trump won, and there's no undoing that.

8. "Another woman will have a chance." But not the most qualified person, who happens to be female, to ever run for president. In our lifetime, it seems unlikely that a woman with Clinton's résumé will emerge to take the helm of either major political party. One reason Clinton's defeat stung so, so much to her female supporters was because even her experience, intelligence, and political acumen (in no easy feat, she beat Trump in all three debates!) wasn't enough to propel her over the finish line and suggests that America really wasn't ready for a female president. Even though another woman will have a chance to become president, many of our moms and grandmas will not live to see that day.

9. "America is just getting what it wanted. We voted for this." Actually, we didn't. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 1.5 percentage points, which equates to more than 2 million votes, according to the New York Times. Trump won because of the electoral college, which has now denied a popular vote-winning Democrat the presidency twice since 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote by 0.5 percentage points.

10. "People just need to come together right now and support the president-elect." People do need to come together to rally behind what they believe in, whether that's Trump's agenda or something entirely different. Freedom of speech, a hallmark value of this nation, means exercising the right to hold and express viewpoints that are different from those who run our government. And merely holding those viewpoints or taking to the streets to express them through protests and chants does not equate to rooting for the demise of this nation. People don't need to support an administration that is poised to seriously roll back reproductive freedom, environmental protections, and the health care millions and millions of Americans have come to rely on. They don't need to support a man who, with no political experience or clear political convictions, stands to be a wild card in the Oval Office on every piece of legislation. They need to exercise their constitutionally granted freedom to stand up for what they believe in, whether or not that's what the next administration will do.

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Amy Odell editor Amy Odell is the editor of Cosmopolitan.com.

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