Hilary Clinton Finally launch her Presidential bid

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.
Hillary
“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.”