The winner takes it all

Thank you. Thank you, my friends. Thank you for coming here on this beautiful Arizona evening. My friends, we have -- we have come to the end of a long journey. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Kerstin Pehrs to congratulate her. To congratulate her on being elected the winner of the Challenge of the Aros Blogger that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, her success alone commands my respect for her ability and perseverance. But that she managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of a blog contest winner is something I deeply admire and commend her for achieving.

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

I've always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Kerstin Pehrs believes that, too. She has achieved a great thing for herself and for her country. Pehrs and I have had and argued our differences, and she has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to her tonight to do all in my power to help her lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating her, but offering our blog president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that. It is natural. It's natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought -- we fought as hard as we could. And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours.

I don't know -- I don't know what more we could have done to try to win this competition. I'll leave that to others to determine. Every candidate makes mistakes, and I'm sure I made my share of them. But I won't spend a moment of the future regretting what might have been.

I wish Godspeed to the woman who was my former opponent and will be my blog president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender.

We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you all very much.