Hillary Clinton finally announced her White
House candidacy Sunday, a move that
empowers her to parry
Republican attacks
as she seeks to become the United States’
first female president.
Seven years after her bitter nomination
defeat to Barack Obama, the former
secretary of state and first lady jumps into
the race as the Democratic Party’s
overwhelming favorite, as Clinton and her
rivals gird for a bruising 18-month
campaign.
“I’m running for president,” a beaming
Clinton said in a video on her campaign
website that went live at about 3:00 pm
(1900 GMT) Sunday.
“Everyday Americans need a champion,
and I want to be that champion, so you
can do more than just get by. You can get
ahead, and stay ahead,” she said, after a
two-minute clip featuring middle-class and
working-class couples and families
sharing their aspirations.
Her nascent campaign emailed supporters
saying Clinton will spend “the next six to
eight weeks in a ‘ramp up’ period,”
building a grass-roots organization and
“engaging directly with voters.”
Her first rally and the speech that kicks off
her campaign will not take place until May,
her team said.
Clinton will first head to Iowa, the state
that holds the debut vote early next year to
determine the parties’ nominees. “I’m
hitting the trail to earn your vote,” she
said.
The announcement, which meets no
substantial challenge from other
Democrats, will no doubt trigger a donor
deluge from supporters who have long
waited for her to officially enter the race, a
move that would allow them to contribute
directly to her 2016 election effort.
But it also brought an immediate wave of
Republican opposition, including from the
Republican National Committee, which said
Clinton “has left a trail of secrecy, scandal,
and failed policies that can’t be erased
from voters’ minds.”
“Our next president must represent a
higher standard, and that is not Hillary
Clinton,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus
said in a statement.
“We must do better than Hillary,” tweeted
former Florida governor Jeb Bush, just one
minute after Clinton posted her own
announcement to her 3.2 million Twitter
followers, in a likely foreshadowing of the
intense back-and-forth expected to play
out on social media in the run up to the
November 2016 election.
– ‘Barnstorm through Iowa’ –
Clinton’s campaign-in-waiting has quietly
organized for months, bringing on key
staffers and advisors, plotting outreach
operations and strategizing.
On Saturday, she earned praise from
Obama, although experts warn she will
have to tread a fine line in how closely she
aligns herself with the incumbent.
“She was a formidable candidate in 2008….
She was an outstanding secretary of
state,” Obama said at a regional summit in
Panama. “I think she would be an excellent
president.”
The soft approach — a folksy video, small,
low-key gatherings with heartland voters —
would mark a deviation from the Clinton
Inc. juggernaut that ultimately failed in
2008.
After the campaign launch, Clinton, 67,
should “jump on a bus and barnstorm
through Iowa touching all 99 counties and
meet with people in cafes and other small
venues” as she reintroduces herself to
Americans, Iowa State University professor
Steffen Schmidt told AFP.
The one-time US senator and wife of
former president Bill Clinton leads opinion
polls among Democrats, some 60 percent
of whom say they would vote for her in the
primaries, according to website
RealClearPolitics.
A humble approach may help dispel
doubts about Clinton raised in recent
weeks, after it was revealed she used a
private email account while secretary of
state from 2009 to 2013.
But she could face uncomfortable
questions about the issue from voters,
including why she deleted thousands of
emails that she described as personal,
then wiped her server clean.
– ‘Unfit’ to serve? –
Clinton, who has been in America’s
political spotlight for a quarter-century,
has endured heavy criticism from
Republican rivals, and launching her
campaign gives her a platform to
aggressively counter their punches.
“There is sort of a history of the Clintons…
feeling like they’re above the law,” Senator
Rand Paul, who announced last week he is
running for president, told CNN Sunday.
On his website, Paul called Clinton “unfit to
serve as president.”
Conservative Senator Ted Cruz made his
own splashy presidential campaign launch
last month, while fellow Senate Republican
Marco Rubio is scheduled to make his own
all-but-certain campaign declaration on
Monday.
On Sunday, Jeb Bush teased his own
expected campaign rollout.
Just hours before Clinton’s announcement,
the son and brother of two former
presidents released a video saying he
would soon lay out his policy proposals.
“We must do better than the Obama-
Clinton foreign policy that has damaged
relationships with our allies and
emboldened our enemies,” he said.
Clinton leads against her GOP rivals in
nearly all polls, but famed political
prognosticator Nate Silver on Sunday
called the 2016 election a “toss-up.”y
