NEW YORK — With Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat, a force in American political life for nearly four decades comes to an abrupt end.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, a husband-and-wife duo unmatched in U.S. history, brought people across the country into politics, created a vast fundraising network and shaped the nation by holding some of the highest offices in the land.

Clinton, 69, who has made two failed bids at the presidency, is unlikely to be on the front lines of politics again. Her husband, Bill Clinton, 70, a former president who was widely expected to be the first husband to accompany his wife to the White House, likely will return to philanthropic efforts at his family’s foundation.

“I’m glad the Clintons came along. They have contributed greatly to the country and the world,” said Donald Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who is close to the Clintons. “I think they will both be willing to help in the search for new leadership.”

The Clintons represented the rise and maturation of the baby boom generation, perhaps the most discussed, analyzed and self-referential generation in our country’s history. In that sense, they were emblematic of its aspirations, as well of its outsized feelings of self-worth.

On Wednesday, as Donald Trump began to prepare to move into the White House, Clinton said goodbye to American politics and pushed the next generation to keep fighting.

“Many of you are at the beginning of your professional public and political careers,” she told a ballroom full of supporters who had gathered to hear her officially concede the election. “You will have successes and setbacks, too. This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is worth it. And so we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives.”

Clinton won the popular vote — a fact Democrats emphasized Wednesday — but Trump reached the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency with a string of surprising victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

This year, like her first run in 2008, when she lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama, Clinton’s candidacy had a bit of inevitability about it. Her aides were confident of a win against the opponent they saw as the weakest among the Republican possibilities, especially in the final days. They brought out champagne for the last day of campaigning, talked about what jobs they would have in the White House and planned to celebrate Tuesday night with fireworks over the Hudson River.

But Clinton’s campaign underestimated the anger in America and distrust in government, especially by working-class white voters, some of the same voters who had thrust Bill Clinton into the White House in 1992. Democrats now will have to determine how to appeal to blue-collar workers again and how to unite the party, which showed deep fissures in the primary between younger and older voters and liberal and moderate factions.

And with Republicans maintaining control of Congress and holding a record number of governorships, they will have to start looking for new leaders. Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, will be at the top of that list, along with Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Housing Secretary Julian Castro of Texas.

The Clinton dynasty was launched in the 1970s when Bill Clinton first ran for office in his native Arkansas. He served as attorney general and then governor.

As president, he is credited with creating 23 million jobs and presiding over the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. As first lady, Clinton’s stature grew as she presided over a failed attempt to pass a national health care law and traveled globally to talk about women’s rights as human rights. She later served as a U.S. senator from New York and Obama’s secretary of state.

“Public service is a noble calling, and through their distinguished careers the Clintons have uplifted and inspired many people,” said Skip Rutherford, a longtime friend of the Clintons who serves as the dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas. “Hopefully they will continue to do so.”

Bill Clinton is one of the most naturally gifted politicians of his generation. Clinton, like her husband, is persistent and well-versed in policy, though she lacked his ease, his good-old-boy, talking-across-the-fence manner. The Clintons immediately became fodder for Republicans to an extent never seen before.

“She has lived an extraordinary life of public service,” Obama said in the Rose Garden. “I’m proud of her. A lot of Americans look up to her. And I’m absolutely confident that she and President Clinton will continue to do great work for people here in the United States and all around the world.”

But for all of their talents, the Clintons had enormous weaknesses. He is undisciplined, having an affair with a White House intern that nearly toppled his presidency. She worried constantly about her privacy, one of the reasons she created a private email system that marred her 2016 campaign from the start.

Still, Clinton came into the race with one of the best-known brands in U.S. politics in part because of her popular husband and her depth of experience as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

“I think she’s the most qualified person I’ve ever seen as far as everything she’s done,” said Todd Alishusky, 48, a sheet metal worker in Cleveland who has been a Clinton supporter since 2008.