In defeat, the politician may find a status that had eluded her in victory—becoming a symbol for all the women who see themselves in her struggles.
Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any public appearances since her concession speech midday Wednesday, but she can be spotted in the wild. That’s what happened to Margo Gerster, a dispirited Hillary supporter when she was hiking with her daughter to cheer herself up near Chappaqua, New York. Gerster heard a rustling and out of the woods came Hillary and Bill Clinton and their dogs.
You may have to count on a chance encounter like this one to spot Clinton. She’s unlikely to be much in the public eye over the next months. And she may need the rest after an exhausting and savage campaign that resulted in a verdict her supporters neither hoped for nor predicted. Although Clinton carried the popular vote on Election Day, the Electoral College delivered a decisive victory to Donald Trump. The so-called Blue Wall states that went for Trump (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) exposed embarrassing cracks in the Democrats’ campaign strategy. Add to that the humiliation of having to concede a presidential race for a second time in 8 years. Hillary Clinton is done.
And yet. There’s a possibility for Clinton to achieve a status that eluded her during the campaign, and over her last 30 years in public life. If elected president, Clinton would have moved into the White House and had to unpack years of baggage—emails, her husband’s scandals, “super predators,” Benghazi—and then deal with the grueling and unpredictable politics of the next four years. That’s a lot to fit in the Resolute desk. But in defeat, that matters less. Her place in American culture is suddenly very different. Hillary Clinton’s transgressions may be largely forgiven by her supporters and largely forgotten by the public.
As a presidential candidate, Clinton was vanquished. But as a feminist icon, she lives on. She’s the women who withstand the painful misogyny of American society. She’s telling your daughter to raise her hand in class, even if the boys make fun of her. She’s pantsuits and she’s the more than 3 million members of the Facebook group Pantsuit Nation. She’s every qualified woman who had an unqualified man beat her out for a job. She’s the “I Voted” stickers on Susan B. Anthony’s grave. She’s the cracks in the glass ceiling that didn’t break. She’s what could’ve been. She’s the promise of what someday will be.
And as a symbol, she comes right when the American women who supported her most need one. Americans elected a man who has repeatedly attacked women—verbally, and allegedly physically. Trump’s victory has made many women afraid of what could become socially acceptable behavior in a Trump administration. At a policy level, Trump has pledged to appoint a Supreme Court justice who could tip the court into reversing Roe v. Wade, limit access to contraception, and gut welfare programs that disproportionately provide aid to women and their dependent children.
Today, less than a week after the election, many women are still struggling with how to move forward. How will they face a future that will be shaped, as they see it, by a president who is so openly antagonistic to their interests, to their their personhood?
But time will march ahead and American women, including Hillary Clinton, will carry on. It’s what the women of this country have always done. What they’ve always had to do.
On August 18, 2020, American women will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the right to vote. That will be just 77 days before the next presidential election.
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