Clinton never figured out why she was running for president: Biden

US Vice President Joe Biden says Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump because she never knew why she was running for the office.

"I don't think she ever really figured it out," Biden said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times on Thursday. "And by the way, I think it was really hard for her to decide to run."

Biden said Clinton likely felt an obligation to run for the highest office in the US and that the historic nature of her bid weighed on her decision-making.

"She thought she had no choice but to run. That, as the first woman who had an opportunity to win the presidency, I think it was a real burden on her," the vice president noted.

He argued that the former secretary of state saw her victory "would have opened up a whole range of new vistas to women" as did President Barack Obama's for African-Americans.

Biden also took a jab at his party during the Thursday interview, saying the Democratic Party as a whole suffered because "we were not letting an awful lot of people — high school-educated, mostly Caucasian, but also people of color — know that we understood their problems.”

There is “a bit of elitism that’s crept in” to party thinking, he noted. 

“What are the arguments we’re hearing? ‘Well, we’ve got to be more progressive.’ I’m not saying we should be less progressive,” he said, adding that he would “stack my progressive credentials against anyone” in the Democratic Party.

“We should be proud of where the hell we are, and not yield an inch. But,” Biden added, “in the meantime, you can’t eat equality. You know?”

Biden recalled his reaction after watching a Trump rally in October in  Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, "We may lose this election."

“They’re all the people I grew up with. They’re their kids. And they’re not racist. They’re not sexist. But we didn’t talk to them," he wondered, rejecting notions that most of the Americans who voted for the Republican nominee were racist. 

Early this month, Biden censured the 2016 US presidential election, saying he felt “embarrassed” by the ugly nature of the race.

"This has been a very tough election. It's been ugly, it's been divisive, it's been coarse, it's been dispiriting. And it was more a battle of personalities than it was a battle of ideas in my view," he noted at the time.

The 74-year-old politician also stressed that he had no intention of running in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s campaign had been hit with many controversies since its inception in early 2015, but he still managed to stun the world by defeating the Democrat candidate, who was backed by almost the entire mainstream American media.

Thousands of people since then have held demonstrations in cities across the US to protest against Trump's victory, condemning his controversial campaign rhetoric against Muslims, immigrants, women and other groups.

On Monday, Electoral College members across the United States cast their ballots to affirm Trump’s victory. 

Trump needed 270 electoral votes to win the White House, but he received a total of 304. Two “rogue electors” broke from the Republican billionaire. One voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich while the other voted for former Texas Representative Ron Paul.

While Republican electors -- except two -- stayed loyal to their candidate, four “faithless electors” from the Democratic side refused to vote for Clinton. Three electors voted for former secretary of state Colin Powell, and another voted for Sioux leader Faith Spotted Eagle.

Clinton, however, secured nearly 3 million more votes than Trump in the final popular vote tally. 

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