Staunch Hillary Clinton supporter Madeleine Albright took a bite of humble pie Friday — talking back her maxim about a "special place in hell for women who don't help each other"
after the expression backfired and alienated voters Clinton is courting.
"I have spent much of my career as a diplomat," the former secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 writes in an
op-ed for the New York Times.
"So one might assume I know better than to tell a large number of women to go to hell."
She explained "in the excitement of a campaign event" for Clinton in New Hampshire she trotted out a line she'd delivered "a thousand times" before to good effect.
This time, her timing was awful, she writes.
"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 writes. "I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender."
The mea culpa comes just three days after Clinton was crushed in the New Hampshire primary — in part by the non-support of women.
Exit polls showed
Clinton won 44 percent of the women's vote in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary to 55 percent for Sanders.
"I understand that I came across as condemning those who disagree with my political preferences," Albright writes. "If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied."
But she also cautioned "if we do not pay careful attention to this history, the gains we have fought so hard for could be lost, and we could move backward."
"The battle for gender equality is still being waged, and it will be easier if we have a woman who prioritizes these issues in the Oval Office and if the gender balance among elected officials reflects that of our country," Albright writes.