#dnaEdit: Hillary’s second run

She is first off the blocks, as it were. Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, former Democrat senator from New York and former secretary of state, has announced her intention to run the race for the presidency. This is the second time Hillary Clinton is running for the post of president. In the 2008 presidential race, she withdrew when Barack Obama surged ahead in the Democratic primaries. This time round, and at this moment, there does not seem to be anyone on the Democratic horizon who will pose a serious challenge to her in the party primaries. Of course, it is a little too early in the race to make such predictions. The presidential election is due in November, 2016.

The Republicans are keen to recapture the White House, after having lost it twice in 2008 and in 2012. Some of the Republican hopefuls include Paul Ryan, the starry-eyed free market advocate and then there is Bobby Jindal, the Indian-origin born-again Christian right-wing Louisiana governor. Clinton will have an advantage because it is far right Republicans who are raring to fight the Obama legacy. Some of the extreme right-wingers in the US have called Obama a socialist and a communist for some of his welfarist measures — particularly the Obamacare medical insurance programme.

It could be argued that Clinton is not popular in the liberal circles because she and her former President-husband Bill Clinton are viewed more as careerist politicians and less as politicians with liberal values. Of course, Clintons profess liberalism, but they are only too willing to lurch rightward if political exigency so demands. As a matter of fact, Bill Clinton had once famously remarked that welfarism as we know it has reached an end. He was perceived as a man who adopted the Reagan approach of soft conservatism of middle-class family values, including thrift. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s strategy of adapting Reaganism to put the Democrats back in the White House was seen to be the correct move. Liberals suspect that Hillary Clinton would not hesitate to adopt some of the hard positions of the Republicans, both at home and abroad. She is seen as an opportunist — a centrist.

Hillary Clinton is making a straight gender pitch that it is time for America to have its first woman president. The video released on Sunday announcing her entry into the presidential race emphasised the gender empowerment angle. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top”… “Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion,” she said in the video. Arguably, questions will be asked of Clinton why she is seeking the presidency. Not much is known of her vision about the kind of America she would want to preside over. On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton seems to have clearer ideas than in how to reverse the stagnation in America’s pay. So far, Clinton has not revealed her mind on economic policy. As secretary of state in the Obama administration, she had favoured a more interventionist and hawkish stance than the President. Undoubtedly Clinton stands for a kind of politics — domestic as well as foreign — that is more muscular than the Obama style of politics. 

For the moment Hillary Clinton starts off with a strong support base. According to the Pew Research Centre poll conducted between March 25-29, 59% of voters said Clinton had a “good chance” as compared to the 52% who made that same statement in 2007. But that’s just the beginning of the long march that lies ahead.