WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued a mea culpa for a bizarre warning last weekend to women voters who would dare vote against Hillary Clinton — a line that backfired badly during Clinton’s failed New Hampshire campaign.
“I spent much of my career as a diplomat. It is an occupation in which words and context matter a great deal. So one might assume I know better than to tell a large number of women to go to hell,” Albright wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times meant to restore her own reputation and do damage control for Clinton’s campaign.
“But last Saturday, in the excitement of a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, that is essentially what I did.”
Albright, who served as Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, was referring to her line that there is a “special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Clinton laughed at the line when Albright said it.
In the context of Clinton’s race against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the remark made it sound like Albright was calling any woman who voted for Sanders a sellout.
“It is a phrase I first used almost 25 years ago, when I was the United States ambassador to the United Nations and worked closely with the six other female UN ambassadors,” she wrote.
“But this time, to my surprise, it went viral.”
Then came the pullback.
“I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line,” she explained in the article.
“If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied.”
Albright’s line drew attention during the New Hampshire campaign, in part because the Clinton camp had made explicit appeals to gender — stressing the historic nature of Clinton’s campaign and blasting Sanders for perceived sexist slights.
The appeals didn’t work.
Clinton lost the women’s vote to the 74-year-old Sanders by 11 points, according to NBC exit polls — and Sanders won 82 percent of women under 30.