Congratulations to Hillary Clinton for clinching the 2016 Democratic nomination to be president of the United States of America.

As the Associated Press and other news outlets noted Tuesday, Clinton had compiled more than enough delegates needed to become the nominee even before voters in California, New Jersey and other states headed to the polls to vote. Clinton also has insurmountable leads in the number of earned delegates and total votes cast, and last night’s results could only pad her final delegate count.

Admittedly, Clinton is a controversial figure. It’s hard to operate in the harsh national spotlight for a quarter century and not accumulate a lot of opposition. But like her or not, her triumph is more than personal or political; it is historic. Almost a century after women in this country won the right to vote, overcoming arguments that members of “the weaker sex” were not intellectually or emotionally equipped for the demanding world of politics, she becomes the first American woman to win the presidential nomination of either major political party.

The famous warning issued by future First Lady Abigail Adams in 1776 at the moment of our nation’s founding — “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation”– has come a step closer to fruition.

Of course, none of this is pleasant news for Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters. For weeks now they have claimed some theoretical means by which they could still compete for and win the Democratic nomination. However, each scenario they spun depended upon unpledged “superdelegates” somehow deciding to ignore the clear verdict of the voters and cast their ballot with Sanders instead. That wasn’t going to happen, and with each passing Tuesday, the numbers became more and more grim, their path to victory all the more impossible.

Now, after a long, hard campaign that achieved far more than most believed possible and forced important issues onto the national stage, the end has come. That brings deep disappointment and a form of grief; it’s hard to surrender a dream that once had seemed attainable, as Clinton can attest from her own painful loss eight years ago.

But in a speech delivered eight years ago yesterday, on June 7, 2008, Clinton taught her followers how to say goodbye with dignity and an eye toward the future.

“The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States,” she said. “Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him… . So today I am standing with Senator Obama to say: ‘Yes, we can!’

“Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president.”

Senator Sanders, it’s your turn.