Hillary Clinton didn’t expect to give this speech.
Almost a lifetime of working toward this Election Day. A year and a half of campaigning. A general election that had the Democratic nominee fairly favored to win.
But after conceding the election to Donald Trump in the Wednesday’s early-morning hours, she had to concede to the nation:
“I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country,” Clinton said, from a stage inside the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. “But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together, this vast, diverse, creative, unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.”
The remarks were Clinton’s first since she called Trump, shortly before he gave his victory speech around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning. Her campaign had planned a jubilant event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan—whose glass ceiling would serve as an unsubtle metaphor—but supporters there last night left in shock after Trump’s unexpected upset. Clinton declined to address the crowd then, and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, spoke in her stead. “They're still counting votes,” he told the crowd, though by then Trump’s presidency seemed all but certain.
Trump struck a conciliatory tone toward Clinton in his speech last night, thanking her for years of public service and congratulating her for her hard work in the campaign. Clinton’s concession speech needed to strike a similar tenor to follow the American tradition of gracious losing in elections. She seemed to strike a balance between acknowledging supporters’ anguish and calling for acceptance of Trump’s victory: The loss is “painful,” Clinton said, “and it will be for a long time.” But the country now owes Trump “an open mind and the chance to lead.”
Still, Clinton put her supporters on notice that it’s on them to stay engaged: “Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power and we don't just respect that—we cherish it. It also enshrines other things: the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them.”
Clinton’s speech had echoes of a previous one she’d given, when she conceded the Democratic primary to Barack Obama in 2008. Two elections ago, she told women supporters that while they hadn’t cracked the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” of the presidency “it's got about 18 million cracks in it.” On Wednesday, Clinton took note again of the women and girls who dreamed she’d become the first woman president, promising that “someday, someone will” break that ceiling “and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”
In 2008, though, Clinton’s concession was likely an easier one for her supporters to take: Not only did it seem possible she’d run for president again, but she had the capacity then to embrace a future president whose values weren’t so different from her own.
“I have had successes and I have had setbacks—sometimes really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional public and political careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too,” Clinton said. “This loss hurts but please never stop believing that fighting for what's right is worth it.”