Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Democrats for their lack of preparation and response to the overturning of Roe V. Wade.

“We didn’t take it seriously, and we didn’t understand the threat,” Ms. Clinton said in an interview with The New York Times published Saturday. “Most Democrats, most Americans, did not realize we are in an existential struggle for the future of this country.

“We could have done more to fight,” the former Democratic presidential nominee said.

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In the interview conducted in February for the upcoming book “The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America,” Ms. Clinton said that Democrats have been in denial for decades over the strength of Roe v. Wade and the enshrined abortion rights it offered.

She said the party was too trusting in the courts and in legal precedent and was unable to see how the anti-abortion movement was chipping away at abortion rights.

“One thing I give the right credit for is they never give up,” she said of anti-abortion groups. “They are relentless. You know, they take a loss, they get back up, they regroup, they raise more money.”

“It’s tremendously impressive the way that they operate. And we have nothing like it on our side,” she said.

She said the Democratic Party was complacent in the overturning of the landmark Supreme Court case, and if she were in the Senate at the time she would have fought to block the confirmations of the Trump-appointed justices

She also credited her loss in the 2016 election to women voters, who she says abandoned her toward the end for not being “perfect.”

Ms. Clinton called the 2024 election “existential” and warned that if former President Donald Trump were to win again, “we may never have another actual election.”

“And if we no longer have another actual election, we will be governed by a small minority of right-wing forces that are well organized and well funded and are getting exactly what they want in terms of turning the clock back on women,” she said.

Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota Democrat said Sunday that Ms. Clinton isn’t wrong about how the party handled abortion rights.

Mr. Walz, who represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District from 2007 to 2019, said his support of abortion rights back when he first ran was considered “risky.”

“I don’t think she’s totally wrong. Look, I ran in a conservative district, second Democrat since 1892, when I won a seat in Congress, and I was fully supportive of abortion rights. And this is back in 2005-2006. That was considered risky by a lot of people in our party,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

“I think what the former secretary is getting at is that we maybe didn’t understand the threat that was coming, that we thought that Roe was going to protect us. I think there were a lot of us, myself included, didn’t believe that,” he said.