Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term was “a terrible mistake” that cost Democrats the presidency and may have permanently damaged his legacy, Hillary Clinton has declared.

Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on Monday, the former US secretary of state and 2016 Democratic nominee said Biden had reneged on a prior commitment to step aside – and that the betrayal of that promise proved catastrophic. “He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country,” she said.

Clinton argued that had Biden announced in late summer 2023 that he would not run, a genuine Democratic primary would have produced a stronger nominee.

“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,” she said, calling the decision to stay in the race “a terrible miscalculation”.

Biden eventually abandoned his re-election bid in July 2024 following a disastrous debate performance against Trump, during which his wife Jill Biden recently revealed that she believed he was having a stroke while watching him. Biden then went on to hand over the nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris, in August, who went on to lose the general election to Trump a few months later.

Still, Clinton’s claim that any Democrat would have beaten Trump deserves scrutiny. A 2025 report from the left-leaning Way to Win into the 2024 defeat identified three core problems: voters wanted economic change; Republicans held a structural media advantage; and left-wing movements on Gaza, racial justice and immigration were badly out of alignment with the party. A controversial, and belated, internal review of the Democrats’ losses identified a slew of mistakes, describing a party that had lost ground at every level of government for nearly two decades.

In her remarks on Monday, Clinton explained that “once [Biden] didn’t move and did not, you know, admit that he had said he was going to step aside, and then decided not to, and held on for as long as he did, we were in a terrible dilemma.”