Hillary Clinton Just Cleared Up Her 2020 Plans Once And For All

Hillary Clinton is done taking walks in the woods. Well, maybe not entirely, but she's at least pledging to make sure her voice is heard on the political stage. At the same time, though, Hillary Clinton's decision about running for president in 2020 stops all speculation about whether she'll actually throw her name in the ring.

"I'm not running, but I'm going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe," Clinton told CNN affiliate News 12 Westchester. "I want to be sure that people understand I'm going to keep speaking out. I'm not going anywhere."

While Clinton has repeatedly indicated that she won't run for president again, her previous statements were just vague enough that many saw the door as still slightly ajar, as The Washington Post explains. Her latest statement, however, was much more definitive — both about the possibility of her running for president in 2020, and the possibility of her ever running for elected office again.

"I don't think so, but I love living in New York and I'm so grateful that I had the chance to be a senator for eight years and to work with people across our state," Clinton told News 12 when asked if she would consider running for another office, like New York governor or a mayoral position.

However, Clinton also made it clear that the country's problems have never been far from her thoughts.

"What's at stake in our country, the kind of things that are happening right now are deeply troubling to me. And I'm also thinking hard about how do we start talking and listening to each other again?" Clinton told News 12. "We've just gotten so polarized. We've gotten into really opposing camps unlike anything I've ever seen in my adult life."

Rather than running for office herself, though, Clinton has been meeting with the current field of Democratic 2020 presidential candidates.

"I've told every one of them, 'Don't take anything for granted,' even though we have a long list of real problems and broken promises from this administration that need to be highlighted,'" Clinton told News 12. "We have to work really, really hard to make our case to the American people, and I'm gonna do everything I can to help the Democrats win back the White House."

For people who have been closely following Clinton's public statements since her loss in 2016, her decision not to run in 2020 won't come as a huge surprise. She told Recode's Kara Swisher "No. No," when Swisher asked her if a 2020 run was a possibility, and her former campaign chairman, John Podesta, told CNN that he believed Clinton when she said that she wouldn't run in 2020.

And after Clinton made history as the first woman ever to gain a major party's nomination for president, the field is much more open for women in politics this time around. So far, four women senators — Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand — have already declared that they're running for president in 2020. And they're not even the only Democratic women in the field.

In her 2016 concession speech, Clinton acknowledged that that "highest and hardest glass ceiling" still remained in place — but perhaps 2020 could be the year that it breaks.