Hillary Clinton vows ‘to remain on the front lines of democracy’

Hillary Clinton told a group of students at Georgetown University on Monday that she plans “to remain on the front lines of democracy,” despite losing her second bid for the presidency.

“Advancing the rights, opportunities and full participation of women and girls is the great unfinished business of the 21st century,” the former Democratic presidential nominee said, according to a C-SPAN2 clip flagged by the Washington Free Beacon.

“I intend to keep fighting to pursue this agenda and to remain on the front lines of democracy,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton made the comments in a speech at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, where she is the honorary founding chair. She presented human rights awards to Nadia Murad, a former Islamic State captive, and Wai Wai Nu, a Rohingya activist and former political prisoner from Myanmar, and gave a special Global Trailblazer Award to BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet for her reporting on the impact of war conflict on women and children.

Mrs. Clinton praised Ms. Doucet’s reporting as “absolutely essential” to fostering democracy.

“I still believe in truth, evidence, facts,” she said. “There is no such thing as alternative reality, and we have to make sure that we don’t try to live in it or let anybody else push us to live in it either.

“So at a time when expertise, truth and facts are under siege, the work of journalists like Lyse is particularly crucial,” she added.

During a panel discussion led by Ms. Doucet, Mrs. Clinton repeated her ongoing claim that her loss to President Trump was partly due to misogyny and “anxiety” over the globalization of the economy.

“Any of you who have read my book about what happened know that I think misogyny and sexism was part of that campaign,” she said. “It was one of the contributing factors, and some of it was old-fashioned sexism and a refusal to accept the equality of women, and certainly the equality of women’s leadership, and some of it was an outgrowth of all this anxiety and insecurity that is playing on people and leading them in a hunt for scapegoats.”