In first public appearance after Trump victory, Hillary Clinton says America is worth fighting for, as Bernie Sanders calls for Democrats to leave center ground

Hillary Clinton has made her first public appearance since conceding the election to Donald Trump a week ago, challenging supporters to continue the fight for a country that is “hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted”.

“I will admit coming here tonight wasn’t the easiest thing for me,” Clinton told the audience in Washington on Wednesday night. “There have been a few times this past week when all I’ve wanted to do was just to curl up with a good book or our dogs and never leave the house ever again.”

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Clinton was scheduled to appear at the event – a gala for the Children’s Defense Fund, where she began her career more than four decades ago – before her stunning defeat. The organization’s founder, Marian Wright Edelman, a longtime friend, introduced Clinton to the predominantly female audience as “the people’s president”, noting that she was leading the popular vote by more than 1 million votes.

“I know that over the past week a lot of people have asked themselves whether America is the country we thought it was,” Clinton said. “The divisions laid bare by this election run deep. But, please, listen to me when I say this: America is worth it. Our children are worth it. Believe in our country and fight for our values and never, ever give up.

“The words of Dr King, often repeated by President Obama: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’ I know sometimes it can feel awfully long – believe me, I know. But I also know it does bend.”

Clinton chose to honor the commitment to address the gala, an aide said, describing the event as a “homecoming”. In 1969, as a first-year law student, Clinton heard Edelman speak at Yale University and approached her to inquire about an internship. Edelman said the organization had no money to hire her, but if she could find a way, she was welcome.

“And she did,” Edelman said on Wednesday. “She has always been able to figure out how to get done whatever had to be done.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton receives a standing ovation at the Children’s Defense Fund gala at the Newseum in Washington. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In closing, Clinton invoked her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, whose resilience in the face of a difficult childhood was a central part of her message on the campaign trail.

“I dream of going up to her and taking her in my arms and saying: ‘Look, look at me and listen. You will survive,’” Clinton said, her voice wavering. “‘You will have a family of your own – three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up to be a United States senator, represent our country as secretary of state and win more than 62 million votes for president of the United States.’”

Clinton spoke shortly after her rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, vehemently denied claims that he had contributed to her defeat.

In a letter to the New York Times, Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard University, claimed Clinton’s campaign had been undermined by Sanders during a bruising primary contest: “Mr Sanders’ refusal to concede in a timely way as Hillary Clinton won many millions more votes and his constant harping that she was ‘corrupt’ furthered Mr Trump’s message and contributed to the conman’s catastrophic victory.”



Sanders told an audience at a Politics and Prose event at George Washington University on Wednesday: “My campaign brought millions of people into the process, I suspect the overwhelming majority of whom ended up voting for Hillary Clinton.”

Noting emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, published by WikiLeaks, Sanders added: “To say the very least, the DNC [Democratic National Committee] was not a neutral force in the campaign and we had to take on virtually the entire Democratic establishment. Do I think our campaign in a sense made Hillary Clinton a better candidate? Yeah, I do.”

By the end of the primary contest, he said, Clinton was against the Keystone pipeline and Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and supported free college tuition. The Democratic platform is now the “most progressive” in US history, Sanders added.

Despite losing the nomination, Sanders received 18,183 write-in votes on election day in Vermont, according to its secretary of state’s office, putting him third behind Clinton and Trump with nearly 5.7% of the vote.

On Wednesday Sanders was appointed to a junior role in the Senate Democrats’ leadership team, responsible for outreach. During his speech, part of a book tour, he said the party should move away from centrist Clinton territory.

“Can you go out and raise substantial amounts of money from the wealthy and Wall Street and other powerful special interests and then convince the American people that you are on the side of workers and the middle class, or do you finally have to say that we are going to take on the oligarchs, we are going to take on Wall Street and the drug companies and the insurance companies and the corporate media, and we are going to bring millions of people together to create a very different type of party than currently exists? That is a fundamental difference that exists between Bill and Hillary Clinton and myself.”

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Sanders – who, like Trump, beat Clinton in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin – said Senate Democrats would be willing to work with the new president on economic issues that benefit working families. “Towards the end of the campaign he was actually using the term that many Democrats don’t use. He was saying that he was going to be the champion of the American working class. Well, Mr Trump, we have a list of everything that you said, and we are going to hold you to account.”

But Sanders vowed to oppose bigotry, earning a huge cheer from the audience, many of them students. He called on Trump to rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon of the far-right Breitbart News as chief strategist, saying: “The president of the United States should not have a racist at his side. Unacceptable.”