Hillary Clinton, speaking in New York Tuesday, described President Joe Biden’s failed 2024 reelection effort as a “terrible miscalculation,” arguing his decision to run and then drop out at the last moment helped hand Republicans a path back to the White House
New York on Tuesday held a familiar kind of political certainty: Hillary Clinton did not just criticize President Joe Biden’s 2024 run. She called it a “terrible miscalculation” that damaged his legacy and, she said, harmed the country.
Speaking to The New Yorker’s David Remnick at an event in New York. Clinton framed Biden’s return to the national political stage as a sequence of choices that couldn’t be walked back. “He made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself. his legacy. and for the country. ” she said. positioning Biden’s path to the general election as something that could have been avoided.
Clinton traced that failure to the first decision she believes set everything in motion: Biden’s promise that he would be a one-term president and “pass the torch” to a new group of Democratic leaders. She said the problem wasn’t only the reversal itself, but what it prevented. In her view. if Biden had held to his original plan. Democrats would have had “a real contest” for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. “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. ” Clinton added. calling it “a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden.”.
At the center of her argument is a blunt counterfactual: a competitive Democratic primary would have produced a candidate she believes could have defeated Donald Trump in 2024.
Clinton then turned to the moment she says deepened the damage inside the Democratic Party. She argued that Biden’s exit from the race created what she called a “terrible dilemma.” After dropping out at the 11th hour following a distressing debate against Trump in June 2024. she said the party was left scrambling in a timeframe that left little room for a careful handoff.
When Biden exited the race in late July 2024, most primary elections had already passed. With only four months before election day, Clinton said the Democrats’ effective choice became Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
Her sharpest criticism. though. was aimed at how the party reacted to what Biden’s debate performance meant in practical terms. Clinton said politicos met the reality of the situation with “total denial. ” trying to convince Biden that his debate showing had nearly eliminated his chances—while she argued that only polling data was enough to move him to withdraw.
And even after Harris became the de facto nominee. Clinton said the campaign ran into another obstacle tied to the role she couldn’t escape: Harris. in Clinton’s account. was throttled by the fact that she could not credibly speak to the public’s widespread dissatisfaction with the Biden administration. As the No. 2 figure. Clinton said voters who wanted to break from the administration were less receptive to criticism coming from someone closely identified with it.
Clinton summed up her view of the campaign’s constraints by saying that “Some people didn’t want to hear anything from any candidate, especially somebody that he picked to be the vice president, criticizing him.”
Taken together. Clinton’s critique built a single through-line: one reversal that robbed Democrats of what she believes would have been a stronger primary. followed by a last-minute withdrawal that compressed the timeline. then a nominee she says faced an inherent credibility problem because of her position in the administration.
The stakes of that chain of decisions were ultimately measured in the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office—a reality Clinton treated not as fate, but as something made possible by choices she believes could have been made differently.
Hillary Clinton Joe Biden Kamala Harris Donald Trump 2024 election Democratic primary one-term pledge debate performance New York The New Yorker David Remnick