First.
First. Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com

Hey, neato — Americans have decided that a woman should be the nominee of a major political party! It only took 94 years since women were allowed to vote, but hey, better late than never.

For those of us who are cynical/terrified of this country's politics, Hillary's win is a drop of optimism. Don't ignore that feeling, and don't go scrambling for hot takes just yet — just take today, breathe, and bask the sight of a woman as presidential nominee. Whether you like or hate her, whether you wanted Bernie to win, or whether you didn't care which of them got the nomination, there's no getting around what a relief it is to see voters accept women as leaders.

Sometimes, after all other options have been exhausted, Americans can be counted on to actually do the right thing.


Okay, now what?

Well, there's the whole Bernie situation. Hillary's probably up to that challenge: she's brokered Middle East peace deals, so she's faced worse; and there's still plenty to keep Bernie's followers engaged. He won a bunch of seats on the committee that chooses the party's platform, so we can expect to see progressive attention shift from campaigning for president to campaigning for causes. That's great — and it's as it should be, since Bernie's at his best when he's pushing the party to the left on specific issues.

And then there's the bigger challenge: not Donald Trump, but the people who voted for Donald Trump. As Garrett Kamps points out in a great article about Bernie's impact, "none of us will be able to un-see the side of our country that Trump has so tactfully courted and exposed."

Garrett's optimistic that "the country will recover," which is maybe true, but recover to what state? When you make some bad edits in a document, you hopefully have Time Machine running and can roll back to a previous version. When Trump goes away — if Trump goes away — what version of America do we roll back to? The one where we have mass shootings every day? The one where income inequality is getting worse and worse? The one where the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party is beholden to the fossil fuel and banking industry?

Sorry to be a bummer about this. It's not all bad. America's also the country where voters (finally) allowed a woman to be a presidential nominee! Hooray! And we have the First Amendment, which is pretty great! The Grand Canyon ain't bad! We invented jazz! (Well... the descendants of slaves invented jazz, so it's hard to feel 100% great about that.)

The point is, yeah we've got problems. It's a messy country. But now and then Americans do something pretty good, whether it's voting for women or composting more or creating Steven Universe, so it's ok to feel ok when something ok happens.

In fact, that warm feeling is more than ok — it's vital. The first headline I read when I woke up this morning was "Donald Trump Promises New Attacks on Hillary Clinton," so you're going to need to remember how to feel ok if you want to survive the next few months.