OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:55 PM – Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Hillary Clinton delivered a blunt assessment of the 2024 presidential election, calling former President Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term a “terrible mistake” that ultimately cost Democrats the White House.
Speaking alongside New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick at an event at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, the failed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee argued that Biden’s choice to run again severely damaged his personal legacy and placed the country in a dangerous position, effectively clearing a path for now-President Donald Trump’s return to power.
Clinton’s remarks come on the heels of mounting post-election friction within the Democrat Party following a National Committee autopsy report that specifically omitted criticism of Biden’s late-stage campaign exit.
Clinton emphasized that Biden’s decision directly contradicted his initial 2020 campaign presentation as a transitional figure meant to act as a “bridge” to the next generation of leadership. She asserted that had the president abided by that expectation and announced in the late summer of 2023 that he would step aside, an open and competitive primary contest would have naturally revitalized the party.
She claimed further that the resulting momentum would have insulated the Democrats from the critical liabilities that later plagued the ticket, arguing that virtually any mainstream alternative — whether then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat governor, or a Democrat senator — would have defeated Trump.
Reflecting on the 2024 campaign cycle, Clinton complained that Biden’s refusal to step aside earlier trapped the Democrat Party in a “terrible dilemma.” While Biden did eventually end his reelection bid in July 2024 following an embarrassing debate performance, the late hour left the party with no time to hold a traditional, Democratic primary process before Harris took over the nomination. This made the so-called “pro-Democracy” party look like absolute hypocrites, Clinton appeared to suggest.
“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 told The New Yorker’s David Remnick.
“And, 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,” she added.
“Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness … 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.”
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