Hillary Clinton’s “glass ceiling” speech, the most memorable moment of oratory in her political career, once decisively marked the end of her presidential hopes; now, her supporters see it as an inspiring prelude.

Eight years to the day after she declared that, thanks to the number of Democrats who voted for her, the highest, hardest glass ceiling of sexism had "about 18 million cracks in it," Clinton is set to make history as the first woman to become her a major party nominee.


She will finally claim victory Tuesday night in her protracted and unexpectedly bitter fight against Bernie Sanders. And aides say she is likely to reference her own parting comments in the 2008 race, etched in pain but delivered with hope — aimed at restoring the party unity she now needs from the defiant Vermont Senator.

While Clinton’s speech is famous for her “18 million cracks” line, the most important thing she shattered that day may have been the barrier of distrust between herself and Obama. Clinton’s fulsome embrace of her rival that day is now expected to pay dividends as the popular sitting president returns the favor for his former secretary of state. And if Sanders, who is still talking of a contested convention, refuses to drop out, he could look stingy by comparison.

“I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months,” Clinton, dressed in a black suit and pearls, said of Obama on June 7, 2008, speaking from the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on a particularly hot and muggy day. “I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I've had a front-row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.”

She went on to mention Obama by name 15 more times in her concession speech, emboldening her supporters to "do all we can to help elect Barack Obama" four days after she was criticized for not ending her bid with the final primary results on June 3.

“Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been," she said. "We have to work together for what still can be.”

After her speech, “there was no question that she was going to do everything she humanly could to help bring the party together and get him elected,” recalled Mo Elleithee, Clinton’s 2008 traveling press secretary. “The question out there now -- what’s Bernie going to do? -- was not asked after that speech eight years ago.”

As campaign officials like speechwriter Dan Schwerin this week pored over the text Clinton will deliver Tuesday night at what is expected to be a victory party at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the significance of Clinton’s words exactly eight years ago remained in the forefront of mind -- and were talked about internally by campaign officials as “good karma.”

On Tuesday, those officials said, Clinton will make a second plea for party unity by pointing to her own history.

"Part of the parallel is that she's going to work very hard, now that she's on the other side, to reach out to the Sanders people, and to listen," said a campaign official. "I think you'll hear some of that Tuesday night."

“The fact that she was so committed to bringing the party together has some relevance for today,” noted Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s 2008 communications director. “She can say with great credibility and total accuracy that she knows what Bernie Sanders and his supporters are going through, and yet there was a tremendous imperative of electing a Democratic president that she followed through on. Hopefully he will do the same thing.”

For veterans of Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, the emotional concession speech was also significant in that it framed what had been accomplished even in a loss — a big step forward for women in politics — another message campaign allies are hoping to see Tuesday night in victory.

“She managed to both speak to her supporters and prepare them for her endorsement of Obama -- but it was also an incredibly cathartic moment,” recalled Guy Cecil, who served as political director of Clinton’s 2008 bid and now oversees Priorities USA, the independent super PAC backing her run. “For her to zoom the camera out and put it into the historical context was really important, not just for the immediate politics, not for setting up an endorsement, but also to take a step back to recognize what had been done.”

Again, the moment resonates today. “In the middle of an incredibly negative few days,” said Cecil, referring to Donald Trump’s racist comments about the judge of Mexican heritage overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University, “she will have this one, singular, historic moment. It’s refreshing.”

Clinton was expected to clinch the nomination Tuesday night after the polls closed in New Jersey -- and regardless of the outcome in California, the country’s most populous state. On Monday night, the AP said that she had already secured the necessary 2,383 delegates, based on its survey of superdelegates. The campaign downplayed that, noting that on Tuesday night Clinton would "clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates."

Even so, a West Coast loss to Sanders would dampen what Clinton officials would like to be a decisive and strong end to a hard-fought campaign. And Clinton's own history appeared to be on her mind as well as she spent her final days campaigning in California.

“Tomorrow is eight years to the day after I withdrew and endorsed then Sen. Obama,” Clinton noted to reporters at a campaign stop in Compton. And over the weekend, Clinton began resurrecting her most famous line. “Starting next Tuesday,” she told supporters at a rally in Culver City, “we’re on our way to breaking the highest and hardest glass ceiling.”

That capstone concession speech has played a significant role in Clinton’s current campaign since day one. Last April, when she officially kicked off her presidential run on a sunny day in a park on Roosevelt Island, Clinton noted she was setting out on a new journey from a place “with absolutely no ceilings,” essentially picking up where she left off.

And its influence has penetrated beyond overt references to the speech. This time around, Clinton has been more comfortable focusing on her gender and the historic nature of her run, which she downplayed eight years ago until it was too late to matter. “Deal! Me! In!” supporters across the country now cheer along with her when she notes that if playing the gender card means fighting for equal pay and women’s health care then, she's in. The campaign also sells a “Deal Me In” t-shirt at its online store, as well as a $30 tank top that reads, “A woman’s place is in the White House.”

“Sometimes people’s concession speeches tend to be the strongest speeches of the campaign,” said Wolfson. “They feel freer to say what they really wanted to say and she clearly felt that the role of gender was something she wanted to talk about. The reaction was so positive that it served as a pretty strong suggestion that that might be a subject worth more discussion in this campaign."

In her speech eight years ago, Clinton said that thanks to her supporters, “the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”

And while her words were full of hope, it was still a bleak time for campaign operatives and supporters who had poured their hearts into the campaign for 19 months.

“It’s hard not to feel emotional devastation at the end of a campaign,” said Elleithee. “For many people, despite the hopefulness in it, the speech represented that.” But, he added, beginning on Tuesday night, “it no longer represents the end of a journey.”

In Clinton lore, the “glass ceilings” speech is seen as one of her all-time historic moments, after her famous 1997 speech in Beijing as First Lady, where she said famously that “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.” Since then, Clinton aides point to her 2011 speech in Qatar as Secretary of State, when she criticized Arab leaders by telling them that the region’s foundations were “sinking into the sand" as another watershed rhetorical moment for Clinton, and they said they hope her evisceration of Donald Trump's unfitness for office last week joins the Clinton canon of landmark speeches.

But the "glass ceiling" moment remains the most poignant for many Clinton supporters -- people remember vividly where they were standing in the room, and even have saved the clothes they were wearing that day.

Allida Black, one of the co-founder of Ready for Hillary, posted earlier this week on Facebook about the speech: “I was in the front row. I can’t decide if I should wear my 18 million cracks t-shirt on Tuesday.”