Now everyone will love her again. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, in his postmortem on the election, wrote that although as a candidate Hillary Clinton was never “able to show that she was something more than the hyper-prepared, supersmart, best student in the class”, she managed to “show more of herself in her concession speech Wednesday morning, the latest example of politicians doing their best when they’ve lost something they wanted so badly”.
Nonsense. Mrs Clinton made the same case for a united America, an “inclusive, big-hearted America” in her concession speech that she made in the last debate and in plenty of campaign speeches. The change was in the listener, not the speaker. Once she was properly humbled, her grace, grit and authenticity could be recognised. For millions of American women, and plenty of men, she was always striving for something beyond herself, a stronger, more united, equal and caring America. She made this point at the 2008 Democratic Convention, when she talked about the people who had motivated her to run. She said to her supporters: “I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? . . . Or were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?”
The context is all. As long as Mrs Clinton was seeking to be president, she was, to so many, a striving, ambitious, cold and calculating woman. That stereotype is all too familiar to women who want to hold the same positions that men do.