Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the fallout from the 2024 election, arguing that Joe Biden made a major error in deciding to seek another term.
Clinton has mounted two presidential campaigns during her political career, first in 2008 and later in 2016.
In 2008, she was defeated by Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Eight years later, she secured the party’s nomination but was ultimately beaten in the general election by Donald Trump.
Although Clinton was unable to defeat Trump, Biden later did so in the 2020 election.
He served as president from January 2021 until January 2025. It was his only term in office, though he initially set out to campaign for a second.
In April 2023, Biden announced that he would run again in the 2024 election at the age of 80, a milestone Trump also reached in June 2026.
However, after a disastrous June 2024 debate against Trump intensified concerns about his age and fitness for office, Biden withdrew from the race on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Harris went on to face Trump in the general election, but Trump won in November 2024 and returned to the White House in January 2025.
Looking back, Clinton said Biden’s decision to run again was deeply misguided. She told The New Yorker’s David Remnick in a conversation (per The Hill):
“He made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country.
“He had said that he would not run again, and you know, counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky, but I believe if he had kept to that plan and said in, say, the late summer of ‘23 that he wasn’t going to run, that he was going to pass, you know, the torch to the next generation, we would have had a real contest.”
Clinton went on:
“Very sadly, I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether it was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else, would have beaten Donald Trump. So, I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden.”
Kamala Harris has previously expressed a similar view, writing that Biden’s decision to pursue reelection was “reckless.”
She wrote in her memoir about not trying to talk him out of running again:
“Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”
She continued:
“The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
Even so, reports from late 2024 suggested that Biden regretted stepping aside, according to The Guardian.
Biden’s representatives have been approached for comment following Clinton’s remarks.