"Hillary’s life has been preparation for this very moment."

I've got a new essay at BNR about Hillary Clinton, her exceptional campaign, and what an extraordinary candidate she is—and would be no matter against whom she was running.

Hillary's life has been preparation for this very moment. She has built a career fighting for educational and housing rights, for women's workplace rights, for healthcare access, for reproductive rights, for people – children and women and first responders and veterans and people who need jobs, childcare, food. For marginalized people who need someone in power to recognize their value, their humanity.

She was listening, and learning, and figuring out how to be a change-maker as a student. As a young attorney. As the First Lady of Arkansas. As the First Lady of the United States. As a U.S. Senator. As a presidential candidate. As Secretary of State. And still, even now, as the first female nominee of a major party in the nation's history.

Long before she even considered that she might one day be president, she was nonetheless preparing for the role – by living a life in pursuit of being as effective an advocate for change as she could be, which eventually led her toward the presidency.

She hasn't spent a lifetime figuring out how to be president. She's spent a lifetime becoming one.

So when we look at the glaring disparities between her opponent, calamitously unfit by every conceivable measure, we shouldn't judge her by his rock-bottom garbage standard, but by the extraordinary standard she has set.

Head on over to read the whole thing.

And, in one of my favorite Twitter responses ever to something I've written:

I feel like I just got carded at a bar.