Hillary Clinton Lists 2016 Loss Among 'Hard Times' for Democratic Voters
Speaking to Nebraska Democrats, Hillary Clinton grouped her 2016 election defeat with 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and COVID as traumas that have left voters feeling their ballots do not matter, while the RNC dismissed her as unelectable and out of touch.
Hillary Clinton placed her own 2016 election defeat alongside the September 11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic as she sought to explain why many Democratic voters feel their ballots carry no weight, telling an audience of Nebraska Democrats that the party must repeatedly prove to disaffected Americans that they still matter.
Asked during the Saturday event how she would address Democrats who believe their votes are meaningless, the former secretary of state said such voters likely feel that no one in elected office cares about them, and she traced that sentiment to a quarter-century of national shocks. «If you look back on the last 25 years in our country, I was a senator from New York on 9/11. That was a trauma. The terrible financial crisis of 2008 was horrific for people. We had an election in 2016 that, you know, raised a lot of questions that we're still trying to find answers for about what, what kind of really went on, and then we had COVID,» Clinton told the crowd.
She said the response must be a sustained message rather than a single appeal. «What we have to do is demonstrate as clearly as possible and then repeat over and over again, you do matter, and we're going to do everything we can to try to help you have the life you deserve to have,» she said. Clinton argued that Americans are still expected to work hard and do their part, but that their effort should not be «undervalued and overwhelmed by the advantages that are going to the people at the very top.»
The former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said she was excited about Democrats «winning in November» and stressed that the party must show it can deliver. «What's most important is what are you going to do with those majorities? How are you going to show people that you're actually producing results that are going to affect their lives?» she said. She also criticized President Donald Trump, arguing that his messaging approach has grown stale and that voters are beginning to ask whether their lives have improved, pointing to what she described as unusual access to the president enjoyed by wealthy allies and to Trump's own financial gains.
Clinton's appearance came days after she made her first endorsement of a U.S. Senate candidate in the 2026 midterm elections, backing Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. «Minnesota, you have an opportunity to select an extraordinary person and public servant as your next U.S. senator. Please take it!» Clinton wrote on the social media platform Bluesky while sharing a post in which Flanagan touted the endorsement. Flanagan responded that Clinton has spent five decades fighting for working families and said she was honored to have her support.
When an audience member asked what she would have done differently over the course of her political career, Clinton answered that she would have won not just the popular vote but also the Electoral College. She has called the Electoral College an «abomination» in a trailer for a new Netflix docuseries, and the push to abolish the institution, created in 1787, has gained support in some corners of the left, particularly since her 2016 loss to Trump. Clinton won the national popular vote that year, but Trump secured several key swing states that gave him the Electoral College edge and sent him to the White House.
The Republican National Committee rejected Clinton's advice to voters. «Just like Democrat Dan Osborn will never be a senator, Hillary Clinton will never be president, and she's in no position to help Americans escape Democrats' delusional America-last policies she's spearheaded over the last 20 years,» RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said.
8
