An emotional Hillary Clinton wishes Donald Trump success, vows assistance
New York. Hillary Clinton vowed on Wednesday to work with American President-elect Donald Trump, and urged fellow Democrats to allow him the chance to lead the deeply divided country.
“Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country,” the defeated candidate told supporters, holding back tears in her first public remarks since the Republican’s upset victory.
“I hope that he will be a successful President for all Americans.”
“We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought,” she said. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
Ms Clinton’s bid to become America’s first female President was crushed Wednesday after one of the bitterest presidential campaigns in memory.
“This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for and I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country,” she said.
“This is painful, and it will be for a long time, but I want you to remember this: our campaign was never about one person or even one election.”
She said that the constitutional democracy “enshrines the peaceful transfer of power, and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it.”
“It enshrines other things too,” she said.
“The rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them,” she said in what appeared to be a gentle jab at Mr Trump, who called for a ban on Muslims during the campaign, and during one presidential debate appeared to threaten Clinton herself with jail if he was President.
Before polls closed, the Clinton campaign had been confident of victory. Many women supporting her said they could already hear the sound of glass shattering. They had already iced champagne and inflated pink “It’s a Girl” balloons.
In the end, however, she lost even some states thought to be safely in her column, like Wisconsin, and trailed in others, like Pennsylvania and Michigan. And the only woman to ever come close to the Oval Office was defeated.
The US media, the same one which got the nation’s mood completely wrong and is now, according to some polls, the most loathed national institution in American civic life, is attributing Ms Clinton’s defeat to her failure to woo African-American, Latino, Asian and younger voters.
“African-American, Latino and younger voters failed to show up at the polls in sufficient numbers on Tuesday to propel Clinton into the White House,” CNN reported.
While Ms Clinton won the key demographic groups her campaign targeted, she underperformed President Barack Obama across the board, even among women.
Men overwhelmingly supported Mr Trump, 46 per cent to 38 per cent for Ms Clinton. And women, supposedly Ms Clinton’s most ardent base voters, supported her by just 54 per cent compared to Mr Trump’s 42 per cent. Mr Obama won 55 per cent of the women’s vote in 2012.
