NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton told supporters Wednesday that they owed Donald Trump “an open mind and a chance to lead,” urging acceptance of the celebrity businessman’s stunning win after a campaign that appeared poised until Election Day to make her the first woman elected U.S. president.
Addressing stricken staff and voters at a New York City hotel, Clinton said she had offered to work with Trump on behalf of a country that she acknowledged was “more deeply divided than we thought.”
Her voice vibrated with emotion at times, especially as she acknowledged that she had not “shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling.”
Flanked by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky, Clinton then made a direct plea to “all the little girls” watching: “Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every opportunity in the world and chance to pursue your dreams.”
The speech followed a dramatic election night in which Trump captured battleground states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio and demolished a longstanding “blue wall” of states in the Upper Midwest that had backed every Democratic presidential candidate since Clinton’s husband won the presidency in 1992.
Democrats — starting with Clinton’s campaign staff and the White House — were left wondering how they had misread their country so completely. Mournful Clinton backers gathered outside the hotel Wednesday.
“I was devastated. Shocked. Still am,” said Shirley Ritenour, 64, a musician from Brooklyn. “When I came in on the subway this morning there were a lot of people crying. A lot of people are very upset.”
The results were startling to Clinton and her aides, who had ended their campaign with a whirlwind tour of battleground states and had projected optimism that she would maintain the diverse coalition assembled by President Barack Obama in the past two elections.
On the final day of the campaign, Clinton literally followed Obama to stand behind a podium with a presidential seal at a massive rally outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. As she walked up to the lectern, the president bent down to pull out a small stool so the shorter Clinton could address the tens of thousands gathered on the mall. Before leaving the stage, Obama leaned over to whisper a message in Clinton’s ear: “We’ll have to make this permanent.”
Clinton’s stunning loss was certain to open painful soul-searching within the party, which had endured a lengthy primary between Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who drew strong support among liberals amid an electorate calling for change.
“The mistake that we made is that we ignored the powerful part of Trump’s message because we hated so much of the rest of his message. The mistake we made is that people would ignore that part and just focus on the negative,” said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, who was not affiliated with the campaign.
The tumultuous presidential cycle bequeathed a series of political gifts for Clinton’s GOP rival: An FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, questions of pay-for-play involving her family’s charitable foundation, Sanders’ primary challenge, Clinton’s health scare at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony and FBI Director James Comey’s late October announcement that investigators had uncovered emails potentially relevant to her email case.
Yet her team spent the bulk of their time focused on attacking Trump, while failing to adequately address Clinton’s deep liabilities — or the wave of frustration roiling the nation.
Every time the race focused on Clinton, her numbers dropped, eventually making her one of the least liked presidential nominees in history. And she offered an anxious electorate a message of breaking barriers and the strength of diversity — hardly a rallying cry — leaving her advisers debating the central point of her candidacy late into the primary race.
Clinton’s campaign was infuriated by a late October announcement by Comey that investigators had uncovered emails that may have been pertinent to the dormant investigation into Clinton’s use of private emails while secretary of state. On the Sunday before the election, Comey told lawmakers that the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of the newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against Clinton.
But the announcement may have damaged Clinton while her campaign tried to generate support in early voting in battleground states like Florida and North Carolina. In the nine days between Comey’s initial statement and his “all clear” announcement, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That was about 18 percent of the expected total votes for president.
