One of the world’s least surprising announcements was made on Sunday – even as it had already dominated the American news media in the teaser of a run-up to the actual words of that actual announcement. That announcement came first in emails by Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, John Podesta, to key donors and journalists that said, “I wanted to make sure you heard it first from me – it’s official: Hillary’s running for president”. Podesta’s email explained that Clinton will soon meet with voters in Iowa and that she will also host a formal kick-off event some time next month. Almost immediately thereafter, a video announcement appeared on the http://www.HillaryClinton.com website locking the whole thing down for certain.

Watch: Getting started, a video message by Hillary Clinton

This less than tightly kept secret was the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton – former First Lady of the US (and Arkansas), former senator from New York, and, most recently, former secretary of state – will seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for the office of president in 2016. That, of course, becomes the prelude to a campaign to win election to that office in the general election, come in November.

Back in 2008, she had run very hard for that very office – premised at least in part on the idea that if she won the nomination, she would be the first female candidate for a major party in the US presidential sweepstakes – breaking the strongest glass ceiling in the land. But, of course, the fates were not kind to her as Illinois Senator Barack Obama beat her to the finish line tape. His messages of hope and change ultimately proved unstoppable in the 2008 election. (That he was also the first African American candidate for that office also added a real frisson of excitement and enthusiasm for his candidacy for many supporters and voters – although not a little resentment and rage on the part of others for whom Barack Obama in the White House was an absolute anathema.)

Even before the official announcement was out, a plethora of leaks (some carefully rolled out as a tease to draw away some of the oxygen from those pesky candidate announcements coming out from among several Republicans, as well as other leaks, presumably, more accidental than the carefully planned ones) even before the formal announcement, stressed that a Clinton candidacy would bear, as a key core message, the strengthening of economic security for the middle class and the expanding of opportunities for working families in which she will portray herself as a results-oriented “tenacious fighter.”

A few minutes after the announcement was rolled out, this writer received an email from Hillary Clinton (well, okay, from her campaign office) that read:

Friend –
I’m running for president.
Watch our first video to hear why — then tell me you’ll be with us.
I was raised with the belief that living in this country was one of the greatest blessings anyone could have.
Today, for so many families, the path to lasting prosperity is unclear.
Families have fought their way back from tough economic times. But it’s not enough — not when the average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes.
Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.
I’ve spent my entire life standing up for women, children, families, and anyone who needed a little help along the way. That’s what this campaign will be about, and that’s what I’ll do every single day as your president.
It’s time for us to fight for people like my dad, who ran a small business and committed himself to building a better life for his family. People like my mom, who relied on the kindness of others to get through a tough childhood — and like my baby granddaughter, who deserves to grow up in a country where every single kid has the opportunity to live up to her or his potential.
This won’t be easy. And I won’t take anything for granted. I’m going to work my heart out to earn every single vote, because I know it’s your time.
Watch our video — then add your name to let me know you’re with me:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/running
Thanks. More soon,
Hillary

Rather than the style of her 2008 campaign that attempted to portray her effort as an inevitable, unstoppable juggernaut – something that ultimately proved to be a spectacularly unsuccessful one – this time around, this year’s campaign strategy will have real parallels to the ultimately successful path followed by President Barack Obama in his re-election campaign in 2012. In that election, the Obama campaign had set out the question as a choice for voters that was between between a Democratic Party focused on the middle class, versus the Republicans who continued to want to protect the wealthy – and, most lethally, to return the country to the very policies that had led the country into a disastrous recession in 2008-9.

Even before the announcement was out, Republicans were been lining up to take a whack or two at Hillary Clinton. A few days ago before Hillary Clinton’s campaign had even started officially, this writer had already received an email from the Republican National Senate Committee (yes, we receive emails, blogs and newsletters from the full political spectrum) that read, complete with the hysterical boldface and all caps typing, just as it appeared:

Friend, I need to give you a quick heads up. We’re hearing rumors that Hillary Clinton is about to announce that she is running for President this weekend.

We have to fight back.

There are thousands of reasons why this is bad for America, but frankly, you don’t have time to read them all, so I’ll focus on the most glaring:

1. 8 years of Democrat control have left us with: Obamacare, higher taxes, and unimaginable debt. We CANNOT allow another 4 years for Hillary.

2. We saw how Hillary handled a crisis abroad during the tragedy in Benghazi. If you thought President Obama made us weak abroad, Hillary WILL make it even worse.

The policies of the Obama administration have hurt all of us, but this is our chance to make it right. We cannot do that if Hillary wins, and to beat her, we need you to step up today.

This isn’t going to be easy, Hillary has amassed an army of donors to raise $1.7 billion to put her in the White House. That’s nearly TWICE as much as President Obama’s record breaking totals in 2012… twice as much.

We can fight back, but not without your help, Friend. So, I’m asking you now to get into the ring, to join this fight, and to commit you will do whatever it takes to stop her.

And today, all you need to do is add your name to show you’re ready to fight back against Hillary in 2016.

Tomorrow it may take phone calls, next week it may take door knocking or lawn signs, but today all you need to do is add your name, and we need you to step up now.

The only question is, are you willing to do what it takes to stop Hillary? If so, all you have to do is add your name to show you’re ready to stop Hillary in 2016 now.

Friend, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t know you were up to it. I know I can count on you to help stop Hillary by adding your name now.

Jeb Bush Jr.

Whoa! This message might just as well have recommended a clove of garlic hung around the neck too, besides clicking on the hyperlink conveniently embedded in the message. Slightly more cynical readers may possibly be able to recognise in this message the building of an “I’m really mad at Hillary” email list that can be activated quickly and easily as a fundraising tool for a certain former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, when he decides to announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Meanwhile, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has outlined his plans for a broad effort that will attempt to undermine the Clinton record as of state while yoking her to Obama’s most unpopular policies.

Not to be outdone, Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who had already launched his own presidential campaign a week earlier, directed his ire towards the Clinton family’s foundation, arguing it was hypocritical for the Clintons to accept money from Saudi Arabia for that foundation because that country has severe restrictions on female movement and activity. Paul told the NBC TV network’s news discussion program, Meet the Press, “I would expect Hillary Clinton if she believes in women’s rights, she should be calling for a boycott of Saudi Arabia. Instead, she’s accepting tens of millions of dollars.” Taking the gloves off, eh?

Commenting on the fight that is emerging from all of this, and making no bones about where he stands, Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine wrote after her announcement, “The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party’s barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority.”

Going forward, for her part, Hillary Clinton’s plan is to market herself as a serious leader who can work with Congress, businesses and world leaders, in a kind of oblique critique of Obama, given his difficulties in moving beyond Congressional gridlock much of the time. Nevertheless, President Obama is expected to campaign hard for her in areas where his support remains strong, for example, in cities and states his candidacy won in 2012, and where minority voters are strongly represented.

Advisors were telling the media after the actual announcement that Clinton would likely not roll out detailed policy positions in the early weeks of her campaign. Instead, she will be talking about how families should be able to increase their take-home pay, the importance of expanding early childhood education, and making higher education more affordable. Given this initial vagueness on economic policy specifics, commentators are still trying to fathom what, in more precise detail, candidate Clinton’s economic views are going to be as this campaign moves forward.

Describing the planning that has already gone into helping Hillary Clinton frame her economic policy prescriptions, the AP noted, “To prepare for the campaign, Clinton has spent months meeting with economic policy experts, including Heather Boushey, whose research focuses on inequality, and Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and retirement policy expert. The policy development process has been overseen by aides Jake Sullivan and Dan Schwerin.

“Clinton’s growing team of staffers began working Friday out of a new campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. They gathered Saturday to hear from campaign manager-in-waiting Robby Mook, who told them the campaign would value teamwork, respect, diversity, discipline and humility.

“A memo distributed by Mook, ‘We are Hillary for America,’ said the 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.’ ”

Speculating a few days before the actual announcement, Jared Bernstein, formerly an economic policy advisor in the Obama administration, wrote: “She’s to the left of her husband on trade: Pure impressionism on my part, but while Bill Clinton just plain loves him some ‘free trade’ agreements, my sense is that Hillary Clinton, perhaps from all her travels, takes a more realistic view as to what these trade agreements are really about, which is rules by which multinational corporations, investors, intellectually property and patent holders, and financial market traders agree to do business. That’s a very different perspective than ‘TPP [the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership] will boost jobs, innovation, and prevent tooth decay!’

“My impression is that part of this is driven by her interactions with oppressed women in developing countries, for whom expanded trade can be a source of income growth and improved living standards or, just as likely depending on the institutional structures within which expanded trade occurs, crushing exploitation.

“At the corner of Hillary and Wall St.: Here I must admit that I just don’t know how this plays out. She was a senator from New York and while that doesn’t make her Chuck Schumer (who’s often quite friendly to financial markets), neither does it make her Elizabeth Warren (who…um…isn’t so friendly). I’ve written that it will be essential for the next president to help break the shampoo cycle (“bubble, bust, repeat”) that’s bedevilled recent US expansions (my new book — out very soon! — devotes a chapter to concrete steps in this area). At the same time, financial investors tend to want a return on their investment, whether it’s in a real estate venture or a politician. So all I can say is that this one bears watching.

“What about jobs (full employment!), poverty, taxes, budgets, etc.?! Right…all of that stuff. We’ll see, and again, it’s interesting that she’s somewhat of a blank slate on these issues. I mean, she’s a Democrat, so we’re not talking supply-side tax cuts, deregulate industry, and shutter the EPA. One could reference her 2008 run on some of these issues, but I don’t think you’d find much to go on.”

In the weeks ahead, the now-official Clinton campaign will doubtless flesh out these positions, even as the candidate herself has to figure out where to embrace and where to distance herself from the incumbent president. The likely embrace will come over the economic recovery – especially if it continues throughout 2015, even as Clinton speaks to more energetic efforts to broaden economic equality, and in particular for women in the workplace.

Meanwhile, as the Bush email and other messages have clearly indicated, Republicans – pretty much all of them – will be aiming their best shots at Hillary Clinton, rather than at each other, even as the Republicans must still face each other in the primaries and caucuses that have not even begun to take place. Likely themes for them in their efforts to undercut and delegitimise the Clinton candidacy will surely include all of the usual old complaints about the Clinton oeuvre.

But observers, analysts and voters will doubtless also hear about Benghazi yet again, despite the inability of several persistent congressional committees to find much besides sadness there. There will also be a litany of the inevitable charges of sharp dealing with her private email server history while she was secretary of state. And there will doubtless be attempts to place the blame for every foreign policy problem in the world since 2009 directly at her feet – and to give her none of the credit for anything that may have worked out well enough.

And, of course, Hillary Clinton’s biggest stumbling block may well be the fact that she is that rarest of politicians whom virtually everyone in America already has a firm opinion about, even before she even begins her run as a formally declared candidate. In large part, this is because she has been in the national (and international) public eye since 1992. This is going to be one very rough, tough campaign. Lots of sharp elbows, lots of punches to the gut, and perhaps not just a few low blows as well. DM

Photo: A file picture dated 13 June 2014 of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participating in a discussion on her book ‘Hard Choices: A Memoir’, at George Washington University in Washington DC, USA. EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

Read more:

• Second shot: Hillary Clinton set to run again for president at the AP;

• AP sources: Middle-class economics a focus of Clinton’s bid at the AP;

• Hillary Clinton Weighs How to Recast Ties to Obama at the New York Times;

• Clintonomics, Hillary-style: facts, impressions, policy, and politics. Thoughts and impressions of what candidate Clinton’s economic agenda might look like. A column by Jared Bernstein in the Washington Post;

• With ‘Hillary for America’ Memo, a Campaign Sets Its Mission at the New York Times;

• Hillary Clinton’s Main Obstacle: Her Own Inevitability at Time;

• Hillary enters the race at the Economist;

• Why Hillary Clinton Is Probably Going to Win the 2016 Election at NY Magazine.