Play the long game.

Which brings us back to the beginning! This teenager who was a leader in student government, this twentysomething lawyer who helped bring down a criminal president, she’s not a one-hit wonder. She isn’t the candidate who ran and lost once, maybe twice, then was relegated to the backlogs of memory (remember that guy who tied his dog to the roof of his car?). Hillary comes back again and again, no matter what they throw at her; no matter how many investigations they launch to try to find a reason to get rid of her; no matter how many times she is cleared; no matter how they try to demean her and denigrate her, Hillary just keeps carrying on.

She keeps asking for our vote. She keeps asking us what we want in a leader. She keeps speaking up and refuses to be silenced. A lot of people I know have an idea that she is “conniving,” that she’s been plotting her way to the presidency all along, and I really have to ask what the hell is wrong with that? I want a president who has been working her entire life to get to this point, who has dedicated the last 30 years and more to getting here. I want someone who plays the long game, and frankly, I want my daughter to play the long game. Whatever it is she decides she wants to do, I would be beyond proud of her if she was willing to put 30 years of planning into it, 30 years of work and education and sacrifice. In boys, we call that ambition — and we call it a good thing.

I have to come clean about something. I think it’s pretty clear that this isn’t about my daughter. She doesn’t exist yet, but I am really, really hoping that she is born into a country with our first female president, where some of these lessons are on their way to becoming obsolete. I pray that by the time she’s 26, no one would dare comment on her clothing as it pertains to her abilities. But as a professional, unapologetically ambitious woman who is active politically and whose views have changed radically over the years, these are the lessons that I have learned from Hillary Rodham Clinton in this election. And if I had been looking, these are lessons she could have taught me before the Republican nominee ever showed up, before this election, or the last. These are lessons that she has been teaching all of us, all along, quietly and not so quietly, in her stunning pantsuits.

And these are the lessons that we will teach our daughters.