Hillary Clinton on Wednesday repeatedly invoked her 2016 election loss as she urged Americans to vote in November — warning that only an “overwhelming” turnout at the polls could thwart President Donald Trump’s attempts to “sneak or steal his way” to a second term in office.
The remarks from the former Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of State came on the third night of the party’s National Convention, in a prerecorded video address from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., that did not shy away from the bitter nature of her defeat four years ago.
“For four years, people have said to me, ‘I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.’ ‘I wish I could go back and do it over.’ Or worst, ‘I should have voted,”’ Clinton said. “Well, this can’t be another woulda, coulda, shoulda election.”
“Don’t forget,” she added, “Joe and Kamala can win by 3 million votes and still lose. Take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming, so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”
Trump, of course, lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly 2.9 million ballots but went on to seize the White House by winning the Electoral College. On Wednesday night, Clinton recalled how she argued the day after the 2016 election that the country owed the new president “an open mind and the chance to lead.”
“If he had put his own interests and ego aside, seeing the humanity in a child ripped from her parents at the border, or a protester calling for justice, or a family wiped out by natural disaster, that would have been a good thing for America and the world,” she said. “I wish Donald Trump knew how to be a president, because America needs a president right now.”
But Clinton also made the case that Democrats should “set our sights higher than getting one man out of the White House,” and offered an emphatic endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign.
Testifying to “Joe’s thoughtfulness and empathy,” Clinton told the story of the former vice president calling her after her mother, Dorothy, died in 2011, and she praised Biden for his selection of Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate.
Clinton, the first woman to receive a major party’s nomination for president, went on to allude to the history-making nature of Harris’ candidacy. “I know a thing or two about the slings and arrows coming her way. Kamala can handle them all,” she said.
When Harris accepts the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night, she will become the first Black woman and first Asian American to join a major party presidential ticket.
“Tonight, I am thinking of the girls and boys who see themselves in America’s future because of Kamala Harris — a Black woman, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and our nominee for vice president of the United States,” Clinton said. “This is our country’s story: breaking down barriers and expanding the circle of possibility.”
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