USA TODAY International Edition
Clinton launches bid, vows fight
Pledges, ‘ I want to be ... your champion’
“My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion.”
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign in earnest Saturday with a speech and rally in a setting that evoked a revered Democratic past as much as — if not more than — the party’s desired future.
To explain her vision of pros- perity, she cited two voices from the Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and her mother.
Speaking on an island in the East River named for FDR, she echoed some of that president’s anti- Wall Street rhetoric, repeatedly criticizing populist targets such as hedge fund managers, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that stash profits overseas.
“You see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined, and often paying a lower tax rate,” Clinton said. “So, you have to wonder: ‘ When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?’ ”
And echoing the “four freedoms” Roosevelt declared in a 1941 speech, Clinton identified “four fights” she’d wage as president: for equitable economic growth, for national security, for better treatment of children and families and for more efficient and less corrupt government.
Against this, she slammed the “new voices” in the Republican field who she said are “singing the same old song, a song called Yesterday.”
The Republican National Committee replied that her speech was “chock full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric and ideas from the past.”
Clinton noted the history- mak-
ing potential of her candidacy.
“I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States,” she said.
Clinton cited the experience of her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned by her own parents and suffered a difficult girlhood in the ’ 20s and ’ 30s.
“My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion,” Clinton said. “She knew what it was like not to have either one.”
Later, Clinton returned to that theme. Referring to a single mother she met recently who was struggling to raise three children and attend community college, she said, “I want to be her champion and your champion.” The crowd of several thousand supporters roared.
In this and other ways, the speech seemed designed to an- swer the question of why Clinton wants to president. There were a few policy recommendations, but Clinton made it clear that she sees a connection between the people who helped her mother — a first grade teacher, a benevolent employer — and herself.
She has always said Americans ( especially needy women and children) could count on her to fight for them; on Saturday she tried to explain why she fights.
Otherwise, she begins the campaign with many of the same assets and liabilities as when she ran for president eight years ago. As then, it’s hard to say which set is more striking.
Is it the assets — her fundrais- ing ability, her vast network of friends and supporters, her extensive résumé, her peerless name recognition?
Or is it the liabilities — her aversion for the push and pull of retail politics, her entrenched cadre of critics, her reputation for calculation, her peerless name recognition?
Since 2008 she’s burnished that résumé with a stint as secretary of State. But now she’s also dogged by questions about the attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, her use of private email as secretary, and donations to the charitable foundation created by her husband, Bill, after he left the White House.
As in 2008, she leads all her rivals, Republican and Democratic, in the polls.
As in 2008, Iraq — which haunted her campaign ( she voted for the invasion but came to oppose the war) — will be an issue.
But there are differences this year, too.
In 2008, Clinton faced a much more daunting lineup of rivals for the Democratic nomination.
One issue in 2008 — can Americans trust a woman as commander in chief? — seems less pressing in light of Clinton’s experience as secretary of State.
The Roosevelt Island event, which Clinton’s campaign billed as her “official launch speech,” comes amid signs of declines in her popularity.
Political suspense will be based on the same question as eight years ago: Can Hillary Clinton, for all her accomplishments and supporters, win a tough electoral contest? It’s an issue raised by her fall- from- ahead loss to Barack Obama in 2008.
When she announced eight years ago, her campaign posted on its website a memo by pollster Mark Penn that began with the frank admission that “People are always asking, ‘ Can Hillary Clinton win the presidency?’ …”
Eight years later, they still are.