The former First couple have kept their hands in….
Quietly been providing support and assistance to President Biden and Vice President Harris….
Four years ago, the Clintons were as far from political influence as they’d been in ages. In a post–Me Too world, Bill was often treated as persona non grata in public and Hillary was still thought of primarily as the person who lost to Trump. But a few weeks ago, they drew a flurry of media attention with the announcement that Biden would host a major fundraiser in the city with Bill and Barack Obama in late March. (As the inescapable flood of Trump fundraising emails put it: “Obama is back! Bill Clinton is back too.”) The event is just the most public part of what’s been a longer-running behind-the-scenes effort. Neither Clinton considers politics their primary work these days — they’re staying busy with travel, writing projects, and foundation work — but according to a dozen people who’ve spoken with them directly in recent weeks, both have been quietly and steadily increasing their engagement with Washington as the election season heats up.
It’s been eight years since a Clinton was on a ballot, the longest period since Bill’s first failed congressional campaign in 1974, and the 2020 race was arguably the first one in decades in which neither of them was particularly powerful. Now they, and the Democratic Party, are trying to work out what, exactly, their most useful role could now be. No longer a distinct power center or the same draw for donors or audiences as the Obamas, they are nonetheless far from retirees. Instead, they are a unique but amorphous source of advice and influence given their extensive experience and large networks.
Ask anyone around them, and it’s clear that this is largely because of their resilient wish to be involved, no matter how official D.C. feels about them. Bill, 77, remains insatiable in his appetite for political news, and he texts and calls friends to chat about politics for hours on end. “He wants precinct-level data,” said one close associate. “He can’t not do this.” A longtime friend of Hillary’s who also has a place in Biden world shrugged: “They’re junkies! They’re looking at polls; they’re all in.” And of course they are, he continued. “They care! They are who they are. They care about this stuff.” It is also, obviously, personal for them. Hillary has been closely watching the efforts to beat and weaken the man who defeated her since 2016, and Bill has been ruminating unrelentingly on Trump’s rise and his takeover of the GOP, too. (Bill, in particular, still talks often about then–FBI director James Comey’s late incursion into the 2016 campaign as a contributor to Hillary’s loss.)
To some degree, all this has been obvious all along to the most wired-in of Democrats. Though both Clintons’ relations with Biden have shifted over time, they’ve been sympathetic to his political struggles and the challenges of confronting a Trump-dominated Republican Party. Both have expressed to friends that they found the lines about Biden’s age in special counsel Robert Hur’s report to be inappropriate. Neither Clinton can consider themself among the administration’s top advisers or influencers, but Bill has twice visited Biden in the White House. First, he stopped by in May 2022, checking in with the politically embattled president about a looming midterm season that many thought would be brutal for Biden, as Clinton’s first was in 1994. The following February, he visited again to mark the 30th anniversary of signing the Family and Medical Leave Act. When the pair have spoken privately, they’ve often mused about how they consider themselves unique in the modern Democratic Party — able to relate to working-class voters more than other prominent pols.
Hillary, meanwhile, has deepened her connection to Harris. At first, they linked up when the vice-president was preparing for her early foreign trips in 2021. In the years since, the talks between the first woman to hold the vice-presidency and the woman who’s come closest to being president have become less formal, more friendly, and more regular. They speak over the phone, and their chats have since expanded to political conversations on the sidelines of official events and advice for Harris about specific appearances, such as when Hillary gave her tips for speaking at the New York Times’s Dealbook conference last year. She has also visited Harris at her home.
If their latest role is unsurprising given their senior macher statuses within the party, it also reflects yet another evolution in the decadeslong relationships between both Clintons and the current president….
image…Charles McQuillan/POOL/AFP via Getty