Hillary Clinton on the torch passing
Hillary Clinton talks about how she would feel if another woman became the first female president of the United States.
Eight years later, Hillary Clinton hears the sound of shattering glass.
She could be forgiven for having bittersweet feelings about this. As the first woman to be nominated as a major party presidential candidate, she won a majority of the popular vote but lost the Electoral College in the 2016 election that ushered Donald Trump into American politics.
But she says she feels “elation” at the prospect that Kamala Harris, the second woman nominated for the most powerful job in the world, will accomplish what she failed to do: defeat Trump and win the White House.
“She is a unique individual and will be our first female president,” Clinton said in an interview about her book “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty,” which will be published by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday. In what she described as the “long relay race” of women in American politics, “I am thrilled that Kamala is carrying the torch.”
When Harris was elected vice president in 2020, she asked Clinton for advice. Over the past few years, the two women have developed an increasingly close relationship in conversations about hiring, governing during the COVID-19 pandemic, traveling abroad and monitoring criticism. Harris has been “chronically underestimated,” Clinton said.
“That evolved into regular check-ins and visits whenever we had time,” she told USA TODAY. Her phone would ring and a Harris aide would ask, “Are you available for a call from the vice president? Or I could contact her and say, ‘I have something I want to pass on.'”
When President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from re-election in July, Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were among the first Democratic leaders to endorse her, releasing a written statement about 90 minutes later. Harris called all of the Clintons that same afternoon to ask for their support.
Biden also called her.
The vice president has “infinite respect” for Clinton, said Brian Fallon, Harris’ communications director and Clinton’s national press secretary in 2016. He is one of several former Hillary Clinton staffers who are now on Harris’ team. “The secretary can empathize with this situation like no other, and the vice president greatly values her friendship and advice.”
Before the Harris-Trump debate last week, Clinton gave Harris advice through Karen Dunn, a lawyer who handled debate preparations for both women during their campaigns. Clinton advised hitting back hard and trying to bait him. Clinton has more firsthand experience than anyone, as she was the Democrat who took the stage at three of the six presidential debates Trump had previously participated in. (Biden had done two of those debates in 2020 and another, disastrous one, in June.)
“She did an unbelievable job of provoking him and making people see him for who he is,” Clinton said contentedly in a phone interview two days later. Harris was widely credited with unsettling Trump during the 105-minute debate on ABC, which may be the only presidential debate of this campaign.
That is, by baiting him.
The changed policy for pioneers
Of course, Harris does not always follow Clinton’s script.
Clinton cited the historic nature of her campaign as a woman. Harris did not, even though her election would be even more groundbreaking. If elected, she would be the first woman, the first black woman and the first Asian American to serve as president.
Their different calculations may reflect, in part, the difference in their ages and life experiences. Clinton, now 76, was born in the 1940s; Harris, now 59, in the 1960s – the first and last years of the mid-century baby boom generation.
In part, this also reflects the changing politics of pioneers, a development that Hillary Clinton has followed more than any other figure in American politics during her career as First Lady, Senator of New York, Secretary of State and presidential candidate.
In a 2014 interview about her memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton said she believed the sexism she faced during her 2008 Democratic primary campaign – which Barack Obama won – had diminished and would be less of a factor for a female candidate in 2016.
But after the disastrous 2016 general election that ended her political career and devastated the Democrats, she said she misjudged how much things had actually changed.
“I think part of the reason was who the candidate was on the other side,” she said in a 2017 USA TODAY interview about “What Happened,” a post-campaign book analyzing her defeat. “But I also think I underestimated the power of sexism.”
Now, she says, Harris faces a different political landscape.
“From my perspective, she benefited from the opportunity to see not only me but also the other women she ran against in the 2020 primaries,” Clinton said. “There are now greater opportunities for a woman to become a presidential candidate.”
When she was voting, some voters struggled to imagine a woman as president or commander in chief, “and I’ve certainly seen that,” she said. “But the more women run for president, the more they’re seen as vice presidents, the more they’re seen saluting the Marines on Marine One or walking down the steps of Air Force Two, the more the door opens for people to be able to say, ‘Oh, I get it.'”
Some political scientists agree.
“A lot of it is about Clinton normalizing women running for national office,” said Shana Kushner Gadarian, a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs. She noted that even when Biden dropped out of the race in July, the leading alternative to Harris was briefly discussed as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another woman. “We need to skip all these discussions about whether we’re ready for a female candidate.”
“Something will happen”
Get ready for trouble, warns Clinton Harris.
“Be prepared for anything that could happen,” she says. She believes – and other analysts agree – that a major factor in her defeat was the unexpected announcement by then-FBI Director James Comey in the final days of the 2016 campaign that the agency would reopen an investigation into her emails. “I have no doubt that something will happen, because it always happens, and you have to be prepared to be much more aggressive about it.”
The wounds of her loss have not yet fully healed. “Since 2016, people have been asking me, ‘Will you ever be able to move on?'” she writes in the introduction to her 324-page book. “Move on? I wish I could.”
She says she was “tempted” to run for president again in 2020, even though she didn’t make it. “How can you give up on a dream, especially one that’s so big and that you were so close to achieving?”
But she seems more relaxed in this interview than in previous ones, and the tone in the book is a little more personal. She reveals, for example, that her mother suspected that her own father, Hillary’s maternal grandfather, was a closeted gay man. Her mother’s parents had essentially abandoned her mother when she was a child.
“That kind of explained a lot,” Clinton said. Her mother, she added, was “way ahead of her time in her acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Even the book’s cover photo, taken by Annie Leibovitz, shows Clinton with a more casual, less contrived demeanor – a simple dark green blouse, minimal makeup, the only visible jewelry a necklace. There’s a cautious half-smile on her face.
The final draft of the book was completed and on its way to print when Biden withdrew his nomination and Harris stepped in for it—a development that came too late to be reflected in the book.
Clinton recorded a new epilogue for the audio version.
“Some people have asked me how I feel about the prospect of another woman making the breakthrough that I didn’t,” she said. “If I’m honest, in the years since 2016 I’ve also wondered how I would feel if another woman ever took up the torch that I’ve carried and continued to run with it. Would a little voice deep inside me whisper, ‘That should have been me?'”
“Now I know the answer…” she said. “When I imagine Kamala standing in front of the Capitol next January and taking the oath of office as our first female president, my heart leaps.”
