Hillary Clinton will try again on Sunday to crack what
she calls “the highest and hardest glass ceiling” when she starts a
long-awaited second run for the White House as the prohibitive Democratic front
runner.

Clinton’s campaign for the November 2016 election will
emphasize her plans to address economic inequality and will tout the historic
nature of her bid to become the first woman U.S. president, aides said.

One of her biggest challenges will be to show a more
down-to-earth side while connecting with ordinary voters. Critics, including
progressives within her own party, say that after decades as the wife of former
President Bill Clinton, a U.S. senator and secretary of state she has grown out
of touch. 

Posters have appeared around Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign
offices, hanging from traffic lights and pasted on telephone boxes, depicting
her face lined with exaggerated wrinkles and bearing the slogans: Ambitious,
Calculating, Insincere and Secretive.

A few hours before the expected launch, the comedian Kate
McKinnon lampooned Clinton, 67, on the influential television sketch show
“Saturday Night Live”, portraying her as a detached, self-obsessed
and power-hungry candidate in a spoof announcement video.

In a memo made public on Saturday, Clinton’s campaign
manager Robby Mook told staff that while the goal was for Clinton to win the
presidency, the campaign was not about her but “everyday Americans”.

“We are humble: we take nothing for granted, we are
never afraid to lose, we always out-compete and fight for every vote we can
win,” he said in the campaign memo, titled “We Are Hillary for
America”.

Clinton, who lost a heavyweight Democratic nominating
battle to Barack Obama in 2008, was expected to announce her campaign on
video and social media sometime on Sunday afternoon. She will travel soon
afterward to Iowa.

PRE-EMPTIVE ATTACK

Even before the much-anticipated announcement on Sunday,
potential Republican opponents took swings at Clinton, with former Florida
Governor Jeb Bush criticizing her guidance of U.S. foreign policy as secretary
of state.

“We must do better than the Obama-Clinton foreign
policy that has damaged relationships with our allies and emboldened our
enemies,” Bush said in a video released by the political action committee
Right to Rise.

Bush, brother to former President George W. Bush, is
currently exploring a presidential bid.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who formally began his
campaign for the Republican nomination last week, made the rounds of Sunday
talk shows to slam Clinton’s handling of a 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic
compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In her memoir “Hard Choices,” Clinton dismissed
the Republican criticism of her handling of the attacks as exploiting a tragedy
for political gain.

Paul also released an attack ad accusing Clinton of being
out of touch and representing the worst of “the Washington machine.”
The ad was slated to air on cable television in Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and Nevada, which hold the first nominating contests in 2016.

SOME LIBERALS SKEPTICAL

Clinton operatives, meanwhile, have already begun
reaching out to top bundlers to urge them to start calling people in their
donor networks, a source familiar with the matter said. At least one West Coast
bundler began making calls to top donors this past week, and will place another
round of calls after the announcement Sunday, the source said.

Many Democrats have eagerly awaited Sunday’s announcement
since the day in June 2008 when Clinton pulled out of her primary battle
against Obama with an expression of regret that she could not crack “that
highest and hardest glass ceiling this time”.

But Clinton still has to convince some liberals that she
is the best candidate to tackle issues like income inequality and the power of
Wall Street banks. Some liberal groups are pushing Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren,
a staunch foe of some Wall Street practices, to challenge Clinton.

Opinion polls show Clinton has a huge lead over potential
2016 Democratic rivals, and few are expected to enter the race. A Reuters-Ipsos
tracking poll shows Clinton backed by more than 60 percent of Democrats.
Warren, who says she is not running, is a distant second at 18 percent.

On Saturday at the Americas summit in Panama City, Obama
said at a news conference that Clinton would make an “excellent
president.”

Germany’s foreign minister welcomed Clinton’s expected
announcement. Writing in Germany’s top-selling Bild daily on Sunday,
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Clinton has been a reliable partner for Europe and
“has also proven she has sure instincts in world crises – from Afghanistan
to the Middle East.”

So far, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and
former U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, whose support languishes in single
digits in polls, are the most prominent Democratic contenders to take steps
toward challenging her. 

-Reuters