Hillary Clinton will probably take a little time to recover from her devastating loss Tuesday night, but I doubt she’ll be out of the public eye forever. I don’t think, however, that she will run for office again (or maybe third time’s a charm?).
Previously, I wrote that in her concession speech on Wednesday Clinton couldn’t help but fall into her habit of talking about being a woman and the possibility of becoming the first woman president. Yet ultimately, it was a stoic and powerful speech.
Where was this side of Clinton during the campaign? Some people on Twitter wondered: What if the tone of the campaign had been between concession-speech Clinton and acceptance-speech Donald Trump? It might not have been such a divisive campaign.
Clinton had already lost points the previous night when she declined to address her supporters, who had waited for hours at her “victory” party headquarters in New York. Instead, she sent campaign chair John Podesta to announce that they would wait until more votes were counted before they said anything more.
Instantly, comparisons to Trump emerged. Clinton and the media had excoriated Trump for saying he might not accept the results of the election, and here was Clinton unable to even face her supporters or concede. She did, however, call Trump shortly after to concede in private, and then held a formal concession speech Wednesday morning.
Other than falling back on her gender, Clinton’s speech hit all the right notes: She thanked the crowd, stated her hope that Trump would be a “successful president for all Americans” and apologized for losing. She said she was “disappointed” and commiserated with her supporters, and she urged them to keep an “open mind” about Trump.
Then she told her supporters to keep fighting for their causes. Specifically, for young people, she said: “This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.”
It was a humanizing moment that marked peak Clinton. Too bad it came at the tail end of her political career.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
