Clinton concedes; Collins comments cogently.

Gail Collins has a valedictory for Hillary's campaign on today's New York Times op-ed page. After quoting some despairing remarks by Muriel Fox, one of the founders of NOW, Ms. Collins gives some historical perspective with this:

Feel free to make fun of them. The women of Fox’s generation ought to be used to it by now. The movement they started was the first fight for equality in which the opposition deployed ridicule as its most lethal weapon. They won the ban on sex discrimination in employment by letting a conservative congressman propose it as a joke. When they staged their historic march in New York in 1970, they heard themselves described as “braless bubble-heads” by a U.S. senator and were laughed at on the evening news.

She concludes with this:

For all [Clinton's] vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.