Merry Christmas, Hillary Clinton

I am grateful to you for running a campaign on principle, patriotism, decency, honesty, intelligence, optimism, maturity, experience, care, and civility.

I am grateful to you for suffering such abuse from so many quarters for so many years and always coming back fighting — for us. You did it for us.

I cannot imagine the disappointment and, yes, anger and you must feel.

I fear that you might think you disappointed us. But we disappointed you. I wish I had knocked that many more doors in Pennsylvania. I wish I could have been that much more persuasive here, in so-called social media. I wish we could have won it for you.

In any case, I am grateful to you for giving me a gift before Christmas. You gave me my sense of citizenship back. I was a journalist and that separated me from the public we want to serve. In your campaign, I found an urgency, a reason to care, an opportunity to meet and listen to my fellow citizens, and, yes, a cause.

I want to live in your America, in your world. That, tragically, is not where we are now. We will have to learn new skills: how to resist unjust rule, how to protect those who need protection, how to make the unaccountable accountable.

It would be too much to ask you to keep fighting; you have been made to fight for too long. But we do still need your guidance, your leadership, and will be grateful when you can give it.

In the meantime, I pray you enjoy your family, especially your grandchildren, and can begin to see a future through their eyes. I want you to know how much respect, affection, and gratitude I — and I have no doubt millions more — have for you.

So thank you, Madame Secretary. Merry Christmas, Hillary. God bless.