Hillary Clinton, in a poignant appeal, warns Democrats not to repeat 2016

“Joe Biden is the nominee.”Clinton, 72, chose not to make a third run for president this year after losing the nomination to Barack Obama in 2008 and the election to Trump four years ago.She admired the Democratic primary’s largest-ever field of female contenders, though she thought Biden had the best chance of beating Trump, two people who have spoken with her said.Those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Clinton concluded that she would be more help to the party by engaging female voters and acting as a resource on national security issues than by running herself. Clinton’s election was considered a near certainty by leaders of both parties up until election night, and among the factors in her loss was the large number of Democrats who stayed home.That’s where Clinton’s appeal against complacency comes in, Palmieri said.“She is a personification of what is at stake in this election, among other things,” said Palmieri, whose new book “She Proclaims” makes the case that women’s success should not be defined by metrics built by men.“I don’t think there are many Democrats who are overconfident or who don’t understand how hard it will be to win, but if you need a reminder of how much Democrats are going to have to overperform to actually out-and-out win this thing, she is the best possible spokesperson for that,” Palmieri said.Clinton has been making that argument on the speaking circuit, saying Democrats must guard against what she says are Trump’s efforts to suppress the vote and undermine a fair election. Both Clinton and Harris spoke at a memorial service for Gayle in 2018, when he died of cancer at 30.On Wednesday, Clinton held up the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as one example of what she called a failure of leadership.“I wish Donald Trump knew how to be a president, because America needs a president right now,” Clinton said.The importance of female voters to the Democratic Party has become starkly evident since Trump’s election.