Hillary Clinton made her announcement during a Joe Biden campaign town hall to discuss the coronavirus and its effect on women
Hillary Clinton, the first woman to become a major party's presidential nominee, endorsed Joe Biden's White House bid on Tuesday, continuing Democrats' efforts to coalesce around the former vice president as he takes on President Donald Trump.
Biden, as a former vice president and six-term senator, "has been preparing for this moment his entire life," Clinton said. "This is a moment when we need a leader, a president like Joe Biden." The swift unification around Biden stands in stark contrast to four years ago, when Hillary Clinton was unable to win over a significant portion of the electorate's left flank. Sanders battled her to the end of the primary calendar and waged a bitter fight over the party platform before endorsing her and campaigning for her in the fall. Hillary and Bill Clinton have argued that Sanders' push deeply wounded her campaign against Trump.
Despite overlapping for decades as Democratic heavyweights, the Clintons and Biden have never been especially close allies. Biden's nearest alignment with Hillary Clinton came during Obama's first term, when Biden was vice president and Clinton was secretary of state. Both had sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 — and both were dogged by their 2002 votes as senators in favor of the war powers resolution that President George W. Bush used to invade Iraq in 2003.
She punctuated her argument with a line that has been replayed and repeated countless times since: "Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights."