And I believe we need a moon shot in this country to cure cancer. It’s personal. But I know we can do this. The president and I have already been working hard on increasing funding for research and development because there are so many breakthroughs just on the horizon in science and medicine, the things that are just about to happen, and we can make them real, with an absolute national commitment to end cancer as we know it today. And I’m going to spend the next 15 months in this office pushing as hard as I can to accomplish this, because I know there are Democrats and Republicans on the Hill who share our passion—our passion to silence this deadly disease.

If I could be anything, I would have wanted to be the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible.

I also believe we need to keep moving forward in the arc of this nation toward justice. The rights of the LGBT community, immigration reform, equal pay for women and protecting their safety from violence, rooting out institutional racism, at their core every one of these things is about the same thing, it’s about equality, it’s about fairness, it’s about respect. As my dad used to say, it’s about affording every single person dignity. It’s not complicated. Every single one of these issues is about dignity and the ugly forces of hate and division, they won’t let up, but they do not represent the American people. They do not represent the heart of this country. They represent a small fraction of the political elite, and the next president is going to have to take it on.