Joe Biden shared a starkly critical assessment of Hillary Clinton's campaign after her loss in 2016, telling Barack Obama, "people just don't like her." 

"Boss I told you. People just don't like her," Biden said, according to the new book The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party by Hunter Walker and Luppe B. Luppen.

Biden to Obama: told you so

One imagines that Biden said those words with some spite.

It was Obama, after all, who blocked Biden from running for the presidency in 2016 in favor of Clinton, with whom Obama had always clicked.

"This isn't going to end well for you," Biden was warned by Obama's circle, according to Walker and Luppen.

But Biden had his own misgivings. A campaign stop with Clinton in Wisconsin days before the election "just didn't feel right," he told an aide.

Obama's judgment turned out to be disastrous, as Democrats would find out on Election Day - and Biden was only too happy to rub Obama's face in it.

Clinton's own husband, President Bill Clinton, reportedly formed a similar assessment of his wife's disastrous 2016 campaign - remarking it could not "sell p**** on a troop train."

Obama pulling strings...

Years later, Clinton is floating around as a surrogate for Biden's re-election - and, true to his ego, Obama is telling Biden how to run his campaign.

Obama also had a previously unreported high level of involvement in orchestrating the result of the 2020 Democratic primary, according to Walker and Luppen.

Recall, Biden's initially flatlined bid - he finished fifth in New Hampshire - came roaring to life after a surprise comeback in South Carolina. From there, his competitors dropped out one by one and consolidated behind him.

At the time, it looked like a magic trick, but it was Obama pulling the strings.

"He is reiterating how important it is to be unified going into the fall," a source said, describing Obama's conversations at the time.

"That doesn't mean he's telling Pete [Buttigieg], 'You need to drop out and endorse Joe Biden.' ... He's more nuanced in - not a hammer like that ... It's stressing the importance of unity and being on as strong as possible footing going into November."

The book's authors described Obama's intervention as a well-kept secret that "almost no one" with knowledge felt comfortable discussing.