The women who supported Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign all have stories about the disappointment of the night she lost.
Bishop Leah Daughtry, fresh off serving as the chief executive of the convention where Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination, attended the former secretary of state’s Election Night party armed with personnel lists to discuss in the coming days. After the race was called, she spent three days in bed before turning to the fight ahead.
Eight years later, Clinton will again address the Democratic National Convention, this time to rally support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, the second woman to win a major party nomination.
“We have a chance as women to do what we didn’t do in 2016 and get her over the top,” Daughtry said of Harris.
For many Democrats who hoped Clinton would become the first woman elected president, the sudden elevation of Harris is both a thrilling surprise and a second chance to make history. Clinton’s presence at the convention — the first in-person gathering since her own 2016 event — speaks to that dynamic.
“If I know anything about her, she’s going to be talking about the future,” said Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood. “She’s like my mother before her, she’s not about crying over spilled milk.”
Like many Democrats, Clinton is excited about Harris’ candidacy and is “all in” for her, and her speech will reflect that, according to a source familiar with her thinking. Her remarks are upbeat and will touch on the momentum the vice president has generated. She will also argue that Democrats need to be “clear eyed” about the long road to Election Day and Republicans’ familiar playbook.
Clinton also plans to discuss the proverbial glass ceiling that she herself failed to fully break.
“She will talk about how many cracks have been put in the glass ceiling, but she will also talk about what she sees once the glass is shattered — once Harris does it,” the person familiar told CNN.
Clinton has been in touch with the Harris campaign and spoke with the vice president backstage at the funeral of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee earlier this month about the state of the race, the source said.
When she addresses the convention, Clinton will wear multiple hats, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, Camden. She’s a prominent member of the party — and also the only other woman who has run a general election campaign against Trump.
“I do think there is a unique experience that she had as a woman running against him,” Dittmar said. “I don’t know how much she’ll talk about that in her speech, but that’s another important role that she plays for Harris.”
In interviews, former Clinton campaign surrogates and staffers who are now supporting Harris praised the vice president’s campaign for the momentum it has generated. At the same time, they argued Clinton’s campaign is one of several that helped change the perception of who can run for president. She, along with candidates such as Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 became the first Black woman to seek the Democratic nomination, helped pave the way for Harris, they said.
“I don’t see this as much as others in terms of baton- or torch-passing,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “I see this as creating and seeding the field. That’s what I see as the great gift that Hillary Clinton has given Kamala Harris.”
Though both women have Trump as their opponent, the circumstances are dramatically different. By the time she won the nomination in 2016, Clinton had spent more than two decades in the national spotlight — as a first lady to a president involved in a sex scandal; a New York senator; a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate; and a secretary of state under President Barack Obama. She weathered Republican attacks, congressional hearings and an investigation into her use of a private email server at the State Department along the way.
Despite her own two decades as an elected official in California and as vice president, Harris is still introducing herself to the nation. The Trump campaign is also rushing to define her during a truncated campaign.
“Hillary Clinton represented experience, stability to voters, and she was someone they knew very well, and in some cases, in a very distorted way,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “Harris represents change.”
Over the years, Clinton has reflected on the 2016 election, when she won 3 million more votes than former President Donald Trump but fell short in the electoral college after narrow losses in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. (Clinton also beat Trump among women by 13 points, though the former president beat her among White women by 9 points, according to CNN exit polls.)
In her 2017 memoir “What Happened,” Clinton acknowledged several things she would have done differently, from saying half of Trump’s supporters would fit in a “basket of deplorables” to the use of the private email server, the investigation of which included a politically damaging federal inquiry that then-FBI director James Comey reopened days before the election. The probe did not lead to charges.
Since 2016, Trump and Clinton have continued to trade jabs at each other in interviews, speeches and social media posts. The former secretary has remarked on Trump’s legal troubles, criticized his efforts to frame abortion as a state-level issue and sought to boost President Joe Biden in the race before he ended his reelection campaign last month. Trump continued to call for Clinton to be imprisoned during the 2020 campaign, though he has falsely claimed in recent interviews that he did not.
“Crooked Hillary is a sore loser who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and simply can’t move on with her life because of that devastating defeat at the hands of President Trump,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
Though Clinton is likely to focus on the 2024 election, the 2016 race also offers a cautionary tale for Democrats.
“I think that she, more than anyone else, can speak to the importance of making sure that we all vote, because when you look at what happened in 2016, far too many people stayed home,” said Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan.
Key warnings Clinton issued during her 2016 campaign came true. She and other abortion rights advocates said Trump would appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade; the court, including three justices appointed by Trump, did so with 2022’s decision in Dobbs. And Clinton delivered a speech warning of the rise of the alt-right in August 2016, four years before groups such as the Proud Boys would play a key role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
The 2016 election sparked a surge of women’s involvement in politics fueled by disappointment over a missed opportunity to elect the first female president against Trump, who had claimed he could grab women by their genitals in an “Access Hollywood” tape that surfaced a month before the election.
Trump’s inauguration was met with global Women’s March protests and groups like Red, Wine and Blue formed to capture the electoral energy and harness it toward the 2018 midterms, when a record number of women ran and were elected to Congress.
EMILY’s List, which works to elect women who support abortion rights, had 42,000 women reach out expressing interest in running for office ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, up from nearly 1,000 who sought help during the 2016 cycle.
Christina Reynolds, the executive director of EMILY’s List, said that activity reassured her that America could elect a woman to the presidency soon.
“I know women can get elected, and I know America will elect women, because they keep doing it,” she said.
In 2020, half a dozen prominent Democratic women ran for the nomination, including Harris. Though none of them won, Biden’s decision to select Harris as his running mate positioned her for a future bit of her own — one that has come sooner than many expected.
CNN’s MJ Lee contributed to this report.
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