What Happened

by Clinton, Hillary Rodham

  I am as sure of this as anything I have ever known: America is the greatest country in the world. And, from tonight, going forward, together we will make America even greater than it has ever been—for each and every one of us.

  The speechwriters went off to make final revisions, and I went back to the waiting game. The polls were starting to close on the East Coast, and results were coming in.

  The first warning sign was North Carolina. President Obama had won it in 2008 but lost narrowly in 2012. We had campaigned aggressively there. Now things weren’t looking good. It was early still, but black and Latino turnout wasn’t as high as we’d hoped, and working-class white precincts likely to go for Trump seemed energized. The same was happening in Florida, the battleground state that in 2000 had decided the entire election. We had been hopeful that this time Florida would be the state that broke the Republicans’ back and put our goal of 270 electoral votes within reach. The state’s changing demographics, especially its growing Puerto Rican population around Orlando, as well as the pre–Election Day early vote numbers, seemed favorable to us. But when my campaign manager, Robby Mook, came into our suite with the latest numbers, I could tell he was nervous. Robby is as positive a person as you’ll ever meet, so I figured the news must be bleak.

  Soon the same story was replicated in other key states. In Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 election, things were downright bad. But we had expected that. I reminded myself we didn’t have to win everywhere. We just needed to get to 270. Robby and John Podesta kept me and Bill up to date, but there wasn’t much to say. All we could do was watch and wait.

  Bill was full of nervous energy, chomping on an unlit cigar, calling our longtime friend Governor Terry McAuliffe in Virginia every ten minutes, and eagerly soaking up any information Robby could share. Chelsea and Marc were a calming presence, but they too were on edge. How could you not be? The waiting was excruciating. I decided to do the least likely thing in the world and take a nap. Hopefully, when I woke up, the picture would have improved. I was so bone-tired that even with all the stress, I was able to close my eyes and fall right asleep.

  When I got up, the mood in the hotel had darkened considerably. Robby and John looked shaken. Old friends had gathered. Maggie Williams, Cheryl Mills, and Capricia Marshall were there. My brothers and their families were around. Someone sent out for whiskey. Someone else found ice cream—every flavor in the hotel kitchen.

  I had won Virginia and Colorado, but Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa were all long gone. Now all eyes were on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states that we’d counted on and that Democrats had won in every presidential election since 1992. We were getting killed in heavily white, working-class rural and exurban areas. To compensate, we had to run up big margins in the cities, especially Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Milwaukee, and then everything would be decided in the suburbs. As the hours slipped by, the numbers got worse. Some of the urban precincts were slow to report, but it was getting harder and harder to see how we could find enough votes.

  How had this happened? Certainly we’d faced an avalanche of challenges throughout the campaign. Jim Comey’s letter eleven days before had knocked the wind out of us. But I thought we had clawed our way back. Things had felt good out on the road. The energy and enthusiasm had been electric. And all our models—as well as all the public polls and predictions—gave us an excellent chance at victory. Now it was slipping away. I felt shell-shocked. I hadn’t prepared mentally for this at all. There had been no doomsday scenarios playing out in my head in the final days, no imagining what I might say if I lost. I just didn’t think about it. But now it was as real as could be, and I was struggling to get my head around it. It was like all the air in the room had been sucked away, and I could barely breathe.

  Not long after midnight, the Associated Press reported that I had won Nevada, which was a relief, and I had a good chance to prevail in New Hampshire, but it wouldn’t be enough without Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The experts were telling us that it might be so close that we’d need a recount or at least another day to sort everything out. After 1:00 A.M., I asked John Podesta to go over to the Javits Center to ask our supporters to go home and get some rest. Win, lose, or draw, I’d wait until Wednesday morning to speak.

  Around the same time, John and I both got messages from the White House. President Obama was concerned that drawing out the process would be bad for the country. After so much hand-wringing about Trump undermining our democracy by not pledging to accept the results, the pressure was on us to do it right. If I was going to lose, the President wanted me to concede quickly and gracefully. It was hard to think straight, but I agreed with him. Certainly that’s what I would have wanted had the shoe been on the other foot.

  At 1:35 A.M., the AP called Pennsylvania for Trump. That was pretty much the ball game. Even with Wisconsin and Michigan outstanding, it was getting impossible to see a path to victory.

  Soon there were reports that Trump was preparing to go to his own victory party at the nearby Hilton Hotel. It was time. I decided to make the call.

  “Donald, it’s Hillary.” It was without a doubt one of the strangest moments of my life. I congratulated Trump and offered to do anything I could to make sure the transition was smooth. He said nice things about my family and our campaign. He may have said something about how hard it must have been to make the call, but it’s all a blur now, so I can’t say for certain. It was all perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbor to say you can’t make it to his barbecue. It was mercifully brief.

  Then I called President Obama. “I’m sorry for letting you down,” I told him. My throat tightened. The President said everything right. He told me I’d run a strong campaign, that I had done a great deal for our country, that he was proud of me. He told me there was life after losing and that he and Michelle would be there for me. I hung up and sat quietly for a few moments. I was numb. It was all so shocking.

  At 2:29 A.M., the AP called Wisconsin and the election for Trump. He went on TV not long afterward to declare victory.

  I sat in the dining room of my hotel suite, surrounded by people I loved and trusted. They were all in as much pain and shock as I was. Just like that, everything we had worked for was gone.

  It looked like I was going to win the popular vote, maybe by a significant margin. There was some comfort in that fact. It meant that a majority of Americans hadn’t embraced Trump’s “us versus them” campaign, and that despite all our troubles, more people chose our platform and vision for the future. I had been rejected—but also affirmed. It was surreal.

  I blamed myself. My worst fears about my limitations as a candidate had come true. I had tried to learn the lessons of 2008, and in many ways ran a better, smarter campaign this time. But I had been unable to connect with the deep anger so many Americans felt or shake the perception that I was the candidate of the status quo. And look what they’d thrown at me. I wasn’t just running against Donald Trump. I was up against the Russian intelligence apparatus, a misguided FBI director, and now the godforsaken Electoral College. Yes, we knew the rules going in. We knew the states we had to win. Yet, it was infuriating that for the second time in five elections, a Democrat would win more votes but be robbed by this archaic fluke of our constitutional system. I’d been saying since 2000 that the Electoral College gave disproportionate power to less populated states and therefore was profoundly undemocratic. It made a mockery of the principle of “One person, one vote.” In a cruel twist of fate, the Founders had also created it as a bulwark against foreign interference in our democracy—Alexander Hamilton cited protecting against foreign influence as a justification for the Electoral College in Federalist Paper No. 68—and now it was handing victory to Vladimir Putin’s preferred candidate.

  In my head, I heard the vicious “Lock her up!” chants that had echoed through Trump’s rallies. In our second debate, Trump had said that if he won, he’d send me to prison. Now h
e had won. I had no idea what to expect.

  The speechwriters gingerly approached with a draft of a concession speech. I honestly wondered why anyone would want to hear from me ever again.

  The draft was too combative. It spoke to the fears of millions of Americans about a new President who had campaigned on bigotry and resentment. It said that they weren’t alone, that I would keep fighting for them even now that the election was over. Did people even want me to fight for them? Was there any point in making an argument now? Maybe I should just be gracious, concede, and walk away.

  Jake pushed back. Yes, he said, being gracious is important. But if we believe what we’ve said for the past six months about the dangers this guy poses to our country, then you can’t act like that’s not true anymore. People are scared and worried about what he’ll do to their families. They want to hear from you.

  A spirited discussion ensued. Eventually I asked the speechwriters to take another crack at a draft that was shorter and more gracious but not sugarcoated.

  Bill was watching Trump’s speech on television. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. Eventually everyone left, and it was just us. I hadn’t cried yet, wasn’t sure if I would. But I felt deeply and thoroughly exhausted, like I hadn’t slept in ten years. We lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Bill took my hand, and we just lay there.

  * * *

  * * *

  In the morning, it was real. November 9 dawned raw and rainy. I tried to drink some orange juice, but I didn’t have any appetite. I had a job to do. That’s what I focused on. By the light of day, I saw more clearly what I needed to say.

  The speechwriters came back with a new draft, and I told them I wanted to talk more about what it means to be a democracy. Yes, the peaceful transfer of power was one of our most important traditions—and the mere fact of my conceding honored that. But there’s also the rule of law, equality, and freedom. We respect and cherish these things too, and we had to defend them. “Donald Trump is going to be our President,” I would say. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” But I would also challenge my supporters and all Americans to keep working for our vision of a better, stronger, fairer America. I was determined that my young staff and supporters not become discouraged. “This loss hurts,” I would tell them. “But please, please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is always worth it.”

  Finally, I wanted to speak directly to the women and girls who had put their faith in me and my campaign. It pained me to think of how they must be feeling. Instead of making history and electing the first woman President, they now had to face a stinging rebuke and come to terms with the fact that the country had just elected someone who objectified women and bragged about sexual assault. A lot of women—and men—were waking up that morning asking whether America was still the country we had thought it was. Would there be a place for them in Trump’s America? Would they be safe? Would they be valued and respected?

  I couldn’t answer those questions. I was asking them myself. But I could use this one last moment on the national stage to tell them how proud I had been to be their champion. I could say that while we didn’t break that highest glass ceiling this time, “someday someone will—hopefully sooner than we might think right now.” And I could say to all the little girls out there, with every ounce of conviction in my body: “Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.”

  I got dressed and gathered my things. “One day you’re going to have to show me pictures of what the stage looked like last night,” I told Huma.

  “It looked amazing,” she replied, “built for a President.”

  It was time to go. The country was waiting, and this wasn’t going to get any easier.

  I thought about my mother. There was a time when I was very little, and a neighborhood bully started pushing me around. I ran home to hide, but my mother met me at the door. “There’s no room for cowards in this house,” she said. “Go back out there.” The walk from my front door back to the street was one of the longest of my life. But I went. Mom was right, as usual.

  I gathered my family, took a deep breath, and walked out the door.

  Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

  —John F. Kennedy

  Why

  I’ve spent part of nearly every day since November 8, 2016, wrestling with a single question: Why did I lose? Sometimes it’s hard to focus on anything else.

  I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want—but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.

  I also think about the strong headwinds we faced, including the rise of tribal politics in America and across the globe, the restlessness of a country looking for change, excessive coverage of my emails, the unprecedented late intervention by the director of the FBI, the sophisticated misinformation campaign directed from the Kremlin, and the avalanche of fake news. Those aren’t excuses—they’re things that happened, whether we like it or not.

  I think about all that, and about our deeply divided country and our ability to live, work, and reason together.

  And that’s all before I finish my morning cup of coffee. Then it starts over again.

  In the spring of 2017, I was asked by thoughtful journalists such as Nicholas Kristof, Christiane Amanpour, Rebecca Traister, and Kara Swisher to reflect on what happened in 2016 and what lessons all Americans—and Democrats in particular—can learn from my defeat.

  This is an important discussion to have. It’s not only about the past—not by a long shot. After successfully interfering in one presidential election, Russia will certainly try to do it again. And Democrats are engaged in a vital debate right now about the future of our party, which turns in no small part on the question of what went wrong in 2016 and how to fix it.

  Here’s an example of the sort of questions I was getting:

  “Could the campaign have been better?” Christiane Amanpour asked me. “Where was your message? Do you take any personal responsibility?”

  “I take absolute personal responsibility,” I replied. “I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot.” Then I explained that while we didn’t run a perfect campaign, Nate Silver, the widely respected statistician who correctly predicted the winner in 49 states in 2008 and all 50 in 2012, has said that we were on our way to winning until Jim Comey’s October 28 letter derailed us. You can agree or disagree with that analysis, but it’s what Silver’s data said.

  The reaction to my interviews was negative, to put it mildly.

  “Dear Hillary Clinton, please stop talking about 2016,” wrote one columnist in USA Today. CNN, still stuck in false equivalency mode, declared, “Clinton, Trump can’t stop airing their 2016 grievances.” And one New York Daily News columnist decided the appropriate response was: “Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f— up and go away already.” Seriously, they printed that in the newspaper.

  I understand why some people don’t want to hear anything that sounds remotely like “relitigating” the election. People are tired. Some are traumatized. Others are focused on keeping the discussion about Russia in the national security realm and away from politics. I get all that. But it’s important that we understand what really happened. Because that’s the only way we can stop it from happening again.

  I also understand why there’s an insatiable demand in many quarters for me to take all the blame for losing the election on my own shoulders and quit talking about Comey, the Russians, fake news, sexism, or anything else. Many in the political media don’t want to hear about how these things tipped the election in the final days. They say their beef is that I’m not taking responsibility for my mistakes—but I have, and I do again throughout this book. Their real problem is they can’t bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime
to giving my emails three times more coverage than all the issues affecting people’s lives combined.

  Other candidates who have lost the presidency have been allowed—even encouraged—to discuss what went wrong and why. After John Kerry lost the election in 2004, he quite reasonably said that the release of a tape from Osama bin Laden a day before the election had a significant effect on the outcome of the race. The press was interested in what he had to say. They want me to stop talking.

  If it’s all my fault, then the media doesn’t need to do any soul searching. Republicans can say Putin’s meddling had no consequences. Democrats don’t need to question their own assumptions and prescriptions. Everyone can just move on.

  I wish it were that easy. But it’s not. So I’m going to try to explain how I understand what happened, both the unexpected interventions that swung the race at the end, and the structural challenges that made it close to begin with. You don’t have to agree with my take. But counter with evidence, with a real argument. Because we have to get this right.

  Here goes.

  Common Critiques

  The election was decided by 77,744 votes out of a total 136 million cast. If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won. With a margin like that, everyone can have a pet theory about why I lost. It’s difficult to rule anything out. But every theory needs to be tested against the evidence that I was winning until October 28, when Jim Comey injected emails back into the election.