Hillary Clinton placed the blame for Democrats' 2024 loss squarely on Joe Biden's decision to seek a second term, calling it "a terrible mistake" in a Monday interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick. Clinton argued that any Democrat who emerged from a competitive primary would have defeated President Donald Trump, if only Biden had stepped aside when she believes he should have.
The remarks amount to the most pointed public criticism Clinton has leveled at Biden over the party's 2024 collapse. They also raise a question Clinton seems unwilling to answer honestly: where was this candor when it mattered?
Clinton told Remnick that Biden had initially signaled he would not run again, then reversed course. She said he should have announced in "the late summer of '23" that he was passing the torch to the next generation.
"I believe that 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."
She went further, insisting the outcome of that hypothetical primary would have changed the outcome of the general election.
"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."
That is a sweeping claim, and one that conveniently requires no proof, since the scenario never happened. Clinton offered no polling data or strategic rationale beyond her own conviction. She named no specific governor or senator who would have fared better. She simply asserted it.
When Remnick pressed Clinton on whether anyone had tried to talk Biden out of running, she described a wall of resistance, not just from Biden himself, but from the people around him.
"I know of a few people who tried that, and they were met with total denial and not just from him but from the people around him."
Clinton did not name those people. She did, however, describe a White House that was operating inside its own bubble of certainty.
"There was a belief, and it was strongly held inside the White House that he would win again."
That belief held until it couldn't. Biden's June 2024 presidential debate performance, in which he froze mid-comment and, as the Daily Caller reported, falsely stated that no U.S. troops had perished under his watch during the Afghanistan withdrawal, shattered whatever confidence remained. Clinton said Biden's team was left in "a state of sort of disbelief about what happened."
She added that Biden only began to consider stepping aside after seeing the polls and "after a horrendous public disaster." He withdrew from the race in July 2024 and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee.
Democrats never held the competitive primary Clinton now says they needed. After Biden dropped out, the party rallied behind Harris without a contested process. The Democratic National Convention's autopsy of Harris's 2024 run was leaked last month, though the full contents have not been publicly detailed.
The Washington Examiner reported that Clinton's remarks marked a sharp contrast with her earlier public support for Biden's campaign. And that contrast is worth examining closely, because Clinton was not silent in 2023. She was supportive, with caveats she now treats as prescience.
In May 2023, the Financial Times asked Clinton about Biden's age and his well-publicized stumbles. She acknowledged the obvious.
"His age is an issue, and people have every right to consider it."
But she did not call on Biden to step aside. She did not urge a competitive primary. Instead, she offered this:
"But he has this great saying, and I think he's right. Don't judge him by running against the Almighty, but against the alternative. And I am of the camp that I think he's determined to run. He has a good record that three years ago people would not have predicted would have gotten done."
She added: "I obviously hope he stays very focused and able to compete in the election because I think he could be reelected, and that's what we should all hope for."
Read those words again. In May 2023, the very window she now says Biden should have been stepping aside, Clinton was publicly defending his record, endorsing his determination to run, and expressing hope he would be reelected. She hedged on age but landed firmly in Biden's corner.
This is the pattern. Clinton acknowledged the age problem in real time. She did not act on it. She did not go public with a call for Biden to stand down. She did not champion an open primary. She waited until the loss was final, the blame was ripe, and the cameras were rolling, and then she declared it had all been "a terrible mistake."
It is worth noting that Clinton's own claim, that unnamed people tried to convince Biden privately and were rebuffed, raises the question of whether she was among them. She did not say so. She spoke about "a few people" as though she were an observer, not a participant. If she tried and failed, she hasn't said. If she didn't try, her current criticism rings hollow.
Clinton is not the only Democrat pointing fingers. A related headline from the Daily Caller referenced Sen. Cory Booker declaring, "We are in a crisis right now," about the state of the Democratic Party. The leaked DNC autopsy of Harris's campaign suggests the party's internal reckoning is far from over.
But Clinton's version of that reckoning is selective. She blames Biden for running. She blames the White House staff for enabling him. She implies the party's leaders lacked the courage to go public. She does not account for her own role in that silence. She does not explain why, in May 2023, she told the country Biden could win, and now insists anyone else would have won instead.
Clinton told Remnick she initially thought Biden might have taken medication for a cold or a virus when she watched the June 2024 debate. That detail is revealing, not because it explains Biden's performance, but because it captures the instinct that defined the entire Democratic establishment's handling of his candidacy. See the problem. Reach for an excuse. Move on.
Clinton's argument rests on a premise that flatters Democrats: the only thing wrong with their 2024 effort was the candidate, not the agenda. Swap out Biden, run a real primary, and any generic Democrat beats Trump. That is a comforting theory for a party that lost. It is also unfalsifiable. And it lets every policy failure, every border crisis, every inflation spike, and every cultural overreach off the hook.
The Democratic Party did not lose in 2024 because it picked the wrong messenger. It lost because voters looked at the record and made a choice. Clinton's "terrible mistake" framing asks the public to believe the product was fine, they just needed better packaging.
Voters already answered that question at the ballot box. Clinton is still arguing with the receipt.
