I hoped that when I woke up Wednesday morning, somehow things would be different. But, you know what? They’re not. Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States of America. Accept it. If Hillary Clinton can call Donald Trump to concede and accept the results of the election, then you should be able to accept them too.

Since Tuesday night when the results started coming in, I’ve never seen so many posts on Facebook and Twitter about Politics, or anything really. Just about everyone was blaming certain factors or people for why Trump was winning, and eventually, won. That is precisely the problem. If all the people who were making multiple posts about how terrible a Trump Presidency will be were encouraging and informing people about voting the day before, we might not be in this situation today. It is no one’s fault but our own, as Americans, that Trump was elected.

Don’t blame. Build.

I am tired of the blame game. The favorite thing I’ve seen so far, is what I shared on Facebook Tuesday night: “Don’t Blame. Build.” Yes, Hillary won the popular vote, but should we be blaming the electoral college for her loss? No. I’ve written and talked about many times before about how much I hate the electoral college, but I am not angry about that today. It is the system we have always used, the same system which elected Obama in 2008 and 2012. If Bernie was the nominee, would he have won? Possibly. But, Bernie Sanders was not who was running. Even though the process was not fair, at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton received more delegates than Bernie and was the Democratic party nominee. Deal with it. Many are angry with the people who voted third party, and I’m sure those of you who voted third party are taking some heat today. Honestly, you probably deserve it. There was no one who would get more pissed off at people who voted third party than me. But today, I am not blaming them.

The real problem

The bottom line is not enough people voted. 46.9% of eligible voters did not vote. That is disgraceful. That doesn’t even count all the people who wrote in Harambe, or Hennessey, or some other stupid thing. If you want to know why Trump won, it’s this: Democrats didn’t turn out. 6.8 million less people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Obama in 2012. To put that in perspective, in this election, about 5.4 million people from California voted for Hillary, and about 1.3 million from Minnesota voted for her. So, if she could’ve had those extra 6.8 million people voting for her, it would have been like having an extra California and Minnesota going for her in this election. That would be more than enough to make up her deficits in key states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. It is empirically proven that Republicans always come out to vote in elections. In every election, the main difference is whether the Democrats can turn out enough people to win. This year, we failed.

Don’t give up – there’s still hope

This is what the electoral map would look like if just 18-25 year olds voted: http://tinyurl.com/jt7e6jt. This is our Political future; these are our generation’s values. If we get discouraged and become disengaged, this will never come to fruition. This is a representative democracy: the people whose values get represented are the ones who make their voices heard. Your voice will not get heard by ranting on Facebook, or by booing at a rally. Your voice gets heard by voting.

Tuesday was a really awful day. Trump was elected President, and Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate. This is the first time they have had control of all three since 1928. Do you know what followed that? The Great Depression. Locally, it was not much better. Democrats could not gain back control of the state House, and we even lost control of the Senate. This is why we can not get down and become apathetic. We need to become energized in order to take these seats back both locally and nationally in 2 years, and in 4 years, get President Trump out of office. There are only 720 days until midterm elections, where we will also have to fight to get a Democrat elected to the open Governor’s seat to continue the great strides our state has made under Governor Dayton.

Take some time to mourn and be sad. But, remember, the sun still came up today and the world didn’t fall apart… it’s not all bad. Get ready to be energized and stay engaged so we can get our values represented and prevent anything like this from ever happening again. Make this the turning point in history that galvanized our nation to stand up for what we truly believe in. Make the 2016 Presidential election Racism and Sexism’s last stand.

The buck stops here.