Hillary Clinton launched a bid for the presidency of the United States on Sunday, seeking again the Democratic nomination she lost to Barack Obama seven years ago.
In a video posted online, Ms. Clinton pitched her second attempt to become president with a direct appeal to ordinary citizens.
"Everyday Americans need a champion. I want to be that champion," she said.
In a carefully-orchestrated, slow-motion reveal, the Clinton campaign had kept the nation waiting for weeks for the long-anticipated announcement.
"I'm hitting the road to earn your vote," Ms. Clinton said at the end of the video. "It's your time and I hope you'll join me on this journey," said the veteran politician, making a second – and likely final – attempt to cap more than two decades as a major, if controversial, player on the American political stage with another presidential campaign.
Simply by announcing, Ms. Clinton became the overwhelming favourite in a Democratic field that – as yet – has no other runners and no potential candidates who can hope to match her unparalleled name recognition, vast war chest, and array of top political operatives already poised to conduct a dominating campaign.
Polls show Ms. Clinton already favoured by more than 50 per cent of Democratic voters, far ahead of other potential candidates like Vice President Joe Biden and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.
If Hillary returns to the White House, she will be the first woman and the first former First Lady to become president of the United States. If she wins the 2016 presidential election, she would also be the second oldest – after Ronald Reagan – president in U.S. history on her inauguration day.
Ms. Clinton is expected to head out on the campaign trail – to Iowa and New Hampshire – later this week.
With Sunday's long-expected announcement, Ms. Clinton will try again to break "that highest and hardest glass ceiling" which, she said, thwarted her in 2008.
Mr. Obama, who beat her then, said Saturday in Panama that his former rival and the woman he picked as Secretary of State would make "an excellent president." Nevertheless three terms in a row for either party is a rarity in modern U.S. politics. Only once since the Second World War, when Republican George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 after Ronald Reagan's two terms has a party held the White House for 12 years.
Another as-yet-undeclared candidate, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, took a swipe at Ms. Clinton in a video posted online Sunday: "We must do better than the Obama-Clinton foreign policy that has damaged relationships with our allies and emboldened our enemies," said Mr. Bush, son of and brother to former presidents, who is widely expected to seek the 2016 Republican nomination.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, already a declared Republican presidential candidate, said Americans didn't want a 'third Obama" term.
He blamed Ms. Clinton for weakening the United States at home and abroad. "She designed and implemented 'leading from behind.' On her watch we have witnessed the rise of Russia, Iran, and ISIS. Radical Islamic terrorists are on the march. Here at home, the Obama-Clinton economic policies have made life harder and harder for millions of hard-working Americans," he said.
A return to the White House by Ms. Clinton would resurrect Bill Clinton's memorable 1992 campaign claim that if Americans elected him they would "get two for the price of one." It would also mark the first-ever return to the White House of a former president as First Spouse.
But long before Ms. Clinton can take on the 2016 Republican presidential nominee in the battle for the White House, she will need to run a far more convincing campaign than she did eight years ago when, despite also holding front-runner status then, she stumbled badly in Iowa and was soundly beaten by Mr. Obama.
In a memo sent to supporters in advance of the official announcement, Ms. Clinton laid out a broad campaign strategy: "This campaign is not about Hillary Clinton and not about us – it's about the everyday Americans who are trying to build a better life for themselves and their families." And she reminded her legions of supporters that, "there will be tough days, but we will bounce back and get back to work."
Ms. Clinton's presidential bid faces unusual challenges. She has an abundance of of money and prominence, two resources other candidates must strive for. But Ms. Clinton also has lots of political baggage, both from her husband's presidency and her own years as Secretary of State, as well as the widespread perception that America's best-known political couple plays by their own set of rules.
The attacks began, even before Sunday's launch. Ms. Clinton "has left a trail of secrecy, scandal and failed liberal policies that no image consultant can erase," said Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus.
Revelations that she opted to use a private e-mail server located in the Clintons' Chappaqua, New York mansion rather than the State Department's during her four years as Mr. Obama's top foreign envoy sparked new accusations of rule-skirting. Ms. Clinton said she turned over all the required e-mails pertaining to her official role – including the still-murky episode in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed. But skepticism greeted her claims that everything else on the private e-mail server – including all her personal e-mails connected with the death of her mother and her daughter Chelsea's wedding – had been wiped clean.
Ms. Clinton has also been dogged by a new controversy over large contributions from foreign governments – including a Canadian government agency backing Keystone XL – to the Clinton foundation.
Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is running for his party's 2016 presidential nomination, attacked Ms. Clinton over the foundation taking money from nations where women have fewer rights than men. "It questions the sincerity of whether or not she would be a champion for women's rights when she accepts money from a country like Brunei, that stones to death people for adultery and realize that this is men accusing women of adultery, not women accusing men, because the men have the only say in the legal system," he said on State of the Nation, one of the Sunday morning talk shows.
The campaign is expected to attempt to re-assert Ms. Clinton as a political force in her own right. There will be more emphasis on her role as an activist, a champion of children's issues and education as well as her two terms as a U.S. Senator from New York.
On Friday, in a politically-timely addition to her autobiographical 'Hard Choices' – the book designed to portray her as tough enough to be commander in chief, Ms. Clinton re-emphasized her softer side, writing extensively about her joy at the birth of daughter's Chelsea's first child.
"Becoming a grandmother has made me think deeply about the responsibility we all share as stewards of the world we inherit and will one day pass on. Rather than make me want to slow down, it has spurred me to speed up," she added.