Hillary Clinton has officially announced her White House bid.
The former first lady is in the running to be America’s next President of the United States.
Tweeting:
Overnight the news first came that Hillary Clinton had officially declared she will run for President of the United States via an email from John Podesta, a top Clinton advisor and a loyalist.
CNBC reports that Podesta’s email went to Democratic supporters saying”I wanted to make sure you heard it first from me – it’s official: Hillary’s running for president.”
The 67-year-old former secretary of state then followed it up about 45 minutes later with a video announcement titled “Getting Started” which showed American families – including ( joyously) a same sex couple, and mothers returning to work .
She said “Every day Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.”
I am hitting the road to get your vote. It is your time and I hope you will join me on that journey.”
Her daughter Chelsea Clinton congratulated her mum.
In her 2008 presidential run, the former first lady lost to Barack Obama, who used social media widely for publicity and fundraising.
Being married to Bill Clinton, the 42nd US President between 1993 and 2001, Ms Clinton knows a thing or two about the role.
Ms Clinton is the first Democratic presidential candidate to declare for the 2016 presidential election, and is widely considered to be the party’s front-runner.
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President Obama cannot be re-elected due to a constitutional amendment that stipulates presidents can only serve two terms in office.
Mrs Clinton is the third officially declared candidate for president – and the first Democrat. Republican senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have already announced. Florida senator Marco Rubio is expected to launch his campaign on Monday evening in Miami.
The New York Times reports that she will send out a message that highlights issues that resonate with women including a higher minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, early childhood education, and affordable child care.
With 577 days remaining before Election Day its a long campaign expecting to cost her $2.5 billion.
We look forward to a successful 577 days.
Top Comments
I doubt she'll get up. A few things:
- at 69 if she becomes president she'll be the equal oldest inauguree and previous Democrats attacks on the age of McCain and Regan will make it hard to argue this is an unfair line of attack. Reagan famously countered this by promising not to use his opponent's age and inexperience against him but there's little evidence Clinton has either Reagan or her husband's charm or ability to defuse these sort of attacks without looking angry or entitled.
- she's much better qualified to be president now than 2008 when, like Obama, she hadn't actually done anything apart from a term in the Senate. She now has a serious record as Secretary of State but of course that means there are mistakes that will come up. Maintaining a private email account to send out all her emails as Secretary of State rather than use official channels could sink her if either she has sent out government emails from her private account and not disclosed them or they've leaked due to lack of security.
- Obama for obvious reasons got out the black vote and they vote over 90% democrat. They stayed home during the mid terms when the presidency wasn't an issue and the democrats did badly as a result. Will black democrats come out for a white woman?
- the biggest problem is that she is essentially running for Obama's third term. His popularity has rebounded a bit but took a battering over Obamacare implementation and is still one of the lower approvals around. The last time the presidency was held for three terms was Reagan/GHW Bush in 1988 and Bush the elder followed a very popular president. Clinton won't be riding Obama's popularity into office.
I'm glad a woman is running for candidacy. I'm glad that she has a reasonable chance of winning.
Does anyone else worry that things will be worse for women if Clinton (or any woman) wins because of the backlash?
Obama got elected and re-elected and it seems like even more Afro-Americans are being shot by white police officers. Rape legislation and penalties are becoming tougher in India and the number and violence of rapes seems to be increasing. Rosie Batty became Australian of the year and shines more light on domestic violence. The result is that the number of women dying because of DV in Australia has almost doubled this year.
I know we should be brave and cheer when people challenge an unfair status quo. Unfortunately, some supporters of the status quo use all the power at their disposal (usually violence) to maintain the status quo.
In short, I think if Clinton wins, many women will pay a very high price.
How can you correlate Rosie Batty being Australian of the Year shining a light on this important issue and the increase in DV deaths? So would your answer to this (if it was true) that if women just remained quiet not as many men would be annoyed and therefore not as many women would die! Mmmm....