Hillary Clinton Confirms 2016 Presidential Run: Is Female Candidate Worth the Vote?
Hillary Clinton has officially confirmed that she is running for president in the 2016 election.
In a video posted on her official site, the former first lady announced her second attempt to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination after she was defeated by current U.S. President Barack Obama in 2008, Fox News Latino wrote.
"I'm getting ready to do something, too. I'm running for president. Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Every day, Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion," Clinton said in the campaign video clip posted on her web page.
According to Fox News Latino, Clinton will hold her first campaign speech in Des Moines, Iowa, which is an essential state in the U.S. for presidential candidates. She would go against Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz for the position.
Her campaign manager, believed to be John Podesta, helped Clinton make the announcement to her supporters, Fox News Latino noted. Her campaign announcement was simple and direct to the point and the outlet explained that this move was possibly done to avoid the mistakes made in her 2008 presidential bid. Problems in her previous campaign include the perception that she was "inaccessible and unable to connect effectively with voters," the news outlet added.
Clinton, who is wife to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, is the only first lady to be elected to the U.S. Senate and to become the country's 67th Secretary of State, CNN reported. She has long advocated for foreign policy matters and domestic and economic issues, such as immigration and income inequality, The New York Times wrote. Clinton, whose aim is to fight climate change, also supports cap and trade, a market-based approach used to "trade carbon credits to reduce harmful emissions."
Clinton supports Obama's plans to restructure the nation's immigration policy, indicating that it's important "to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families," The New York Times added in its report.
Her economic strategy, however, still remains to be seen. Although there are expectations that she plans to raise the minimum wage, close corporate tax loopholes, cut taxes for the middle class, and invest in infrastructure, Clinton and her family were criticized for their close affiliation to the financial sector, which included "highly paid speeches to Wall Street banks," the news outlet wrote.
A separate report from The New York Times said that one of Clinton's advantages over her opponents is the support from working-class women and young voters. However, she would need to win over "the so-called Obama coalition of blacks and young, college-educated white voters" who supported the current president in 2008 and 2012.
The New York Times also noted that Clinton's own experiences as a mother and grandmother could convince voters that she is in the best position to address issues that mostly focus on women, which includes income inequality and affordable child care.