In my head, I heard the vicious “Lock her up!” chants that had echoed through Trump’s rallies. In our second debate, Trump had said that if he won, he’d send me to prison. Now he had won. I had no idea what to expect.
The speechwriters gingerly approached with a draft of a concession speech. I honestly wondered why anyone would want to hear from me ever again.
The draft was too combative. It spoke to the fears of millions of Americans about a new President who had campaigned on bigotry and resentment. It said that they weren’t alone, that I would keep fighting for them even now that the election was over. Did people even want me to fight for them? Was there any point in making an argument now? Maybe I should just be gracious, concede, and walk away.
Jake pushed back. Yes, he said, being gracious is important. But if we believe what we’ve said for the past six months about the dangers this guy poses to our country, then you can’t act like that’s not true anymore. People are scared and worried about what he’ll do to their families. They want to hear from you.
A spirited discussion ensued. Eventually I asked the speechwriters to take another crack at a draft that was shorter and more gracious but not sugarcoated.
Bill was watching Trump’s speech on television. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. Eventually everyone left, and it was just us. I hadn’t cried yet, wasn’t sure if I would. But I felt deeply and thoroughly exhausted, like I hadn’t slept in ten years. We lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Bill took my hand, and we just lay there.
In the morning, it was real. November 9 dawned raw and rainy. I tried to drink some orange juice, but I didn’t have any appetite. I had a job to do. That’s what I focused on. By the light of day, I saw more clearly what I needed to say.
The speechwriters came back with a new draft, and I told them I wanted to talk more about what it means to be a democracy. Yes, the peaceful transfer of power was one of our most important traditions—and the mere fact of my conceding honored that. But there’s also the rule of law, equality, and freedom. We respect and cherish these things too, and we had to defend them. “Donald Trump is going to be our President,” I would say. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” But I would also challenge my supporters and all Americans to keep working for our vision of a better, stronger, fairer America. I was determined that my young staff and supporters not become discouraged. “This loss hurts,” I would tell them. “But please, please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is always worth it.”
Finally, I wanted to speak directly to the women and girls who had put their faith in me and my campaign. It pained me to think of how they must be feeling. Instead of making history and electing the first woman President, they now had to face a stinging rebuke and come to terms with the fact that the country had just elected someone who objectified women and bragged about sexual assault. A lot of women—and men—were waking up that morning asking whether America was still the country we had thought it was. Would there be a place for them in Trump’s America? Would they be safe? Would they be valued and respected?
I couldn’t answer those questions. I was asking them myself. But I could use this one last moment on the national stage to tell them how proud I had been to be their champion. I could say that while we didn’t break that highest glass ceiling this time, “someday someone will—hopefully sooner than we might think right now.” And I could say to all the little girls out there, with every ounce of conviction in my body: “Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.”
I got dressed and gathered my things. “One day you’re going to have to show me pictures of what the stage looked like last night,” I told Huma.
“It looked amazing,” she replied, “built for a President.”
It was time to go. The country was waiting, and this wasn’t going to get any easier.
I thought about my mother. There was a time when I was very little, and a neighborhood bully started pushing me around. I ran home to hide, but my mother met me at the door. “There’s no room for cowards in this house,” she said. “Go back out there.” The walk from my front door back to the street was one of the longest of my life. But I went. Mom was right, as usual.
I gathered my family, took a deep breath, and walked out the door.
Why
Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
I’ve spent part of nearly every day since November 8, 2016, wrestling with a single question: Why did I lose? Sometimes it’s hard to focus on anything else.
I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want—but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.
I also think about the strong headwinds we faced, including the rise of tribal politics in America and across the globe, the restlessness of a country looking for change, excessive coverage of my emails, the unprecedented late intervention by the director of the FBI, the sophisticated misinformation campaign directed from the Kremlin, and the avalanche of fake news. Those aren’t excuses—they’re things that happened, whether we like it or not.
I think about all that, and about our deeply divided country and our ability to live, work, and reason together.
And that’s all before I finish my morning cup of coffee. Then it starts over again.
In the spring of 2017, I was asked by thoughtful journalists such as Nicholas Kristof, Christiane Amanpour, Rebecca Traister, and Kara Swisher to reflect on what happened in 2016 and what lessons all Americans—and Democrats in particular—can learn from my defeat.
This is an important discussion to have. It’s not only about the past—not by a long shot. After successfully interfering in one presidential election, Russia will certainly try to do it again. And Democrats are engaged in a vital debate right now about the future of our party, which turns in no small part on the question of what went wrong in 2016 and how to fix it.
Here’s an example of the sort of questions I was getting:
“Could the campaign have been better?” Christiane Amanpour asked me. “Where was your message? Do you take any personal responsibility?”
“I take absolute personal responsibility,” I replied. “I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot.” Then I explained that while we didn’t run a perfect campaign, Nate Silver, the widely respected statistician who correctly predicted the winner in 49 states in 2008 and all 50 in 2012, has said that we were on our way to winning until Jim Comey’s October 28 letter derailed us. You can agree or disagree with that analysis, but it’s what Silver’s data said.
The reaction to my interviews was negative, to put it mildly.
“Dear Hillary Clinton, please stop talking about 2016,” wrote one columnist in USA Today. CNN, still stuck in false equivalency mode, declared, “Clinton, Trump can’t stop airing their 2016 grievances.” And one New York Daily News columnist decided the appropriate response was: “Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f— up and go away already.” Seriously, they printed that in the newspaper.