Watch: Hillary Clinton announces US Presidential bid with her ‘champion’ campaign video
The video is a collection of voters talking about their lives, their plans and aspirations
Washington: Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped back into presidential politics on Sunday, making a much-awaited announcement she will again seek the White House in 2016 with a promise to serve as the "champion" of everyday Americans in a country with growing income inequality.
Unlike eight years ago, when she ran and lost to Barack Obama, Clinton and her personal history weren't the focus of the first message of her campaign. She made no mention of her time in the Senate and her four years as secretary of state, or her potential to make history as the nation's first female president.
Instead, the video is a collection of voters talking about their lives, their plans and aspirations for the future. "Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked in favour of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion," Clinton said near the end.
Clinton's video and new website are scant on policy specifics. But the message made an immediate play to win the support of liberal Democrats for whom economic inequality has become a defining issue.
Clinton now plans to head to the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, looking to connect with voters. Clinton hopes to avoid the same stumbles in 2008, when she entered the race as a heavy favorite only to be upset by Obama in Iowa.
Her campaign said Sunday she would not hold her first rally and deliver a campaign kickoff speech until May.
The 67-year-old Clinton brings a long public record to her second bid for the White House, a history that will both help and hurt her candidacy. Republicans were already pushing a message that seeks to attach her to the scandalous upheavals of her husband Bill Clinton's two-term presidency in the 1990s.
Understanding that, her staff has said she intends to cast herself as a "tenacious fighter" determined to block the growing power of an increasingly right-wing Republican Party that has sought to block Obama's agenda and now controls both chambers of Congress.
Obama said on Saturday that he thinks Clinton "would be an excellent president." As Obama's secretary of state, Clinton used her four years as America's top diplomat in an attempt to rebuild U.S. relations with countries around the world that had become critical of the American war in Iraq.
Clinton enters the race with polls showing her in a strong position to succeed Obama. However, in the last half-century, the same political party has held the White House for three consecutive terms only once, during the administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Republicans will try to counter Clinton's strong resume by casting her as someone who is not trustworthy. They have jumped on her use of a personal rather than a government email account and a server located in her home while she was secretary of state. They have also raised questions about donations from foreign governments to the Clinton family's foundation.
Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus said Clinton's election would be tantamount to giving Obama a "third term."