Hillary Clinton to launch formal campaign with New York rally

New York: Hillary Clinton on Saturday formally launches her bid to become America's first woman president, holding in New York her first big campaign rally where she will outline a progressive vision for the future.

Thousands of supporters are set to throng Roosevelt Island, a tiny sliver of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, where Clinton is expected to be joined by husband Bill and daughter Chelsea in the family's first joint appearance of the campaign.

Her team sees the rally, on home turf in a state where Clinton was senator for eight years, as a chance to turn the tables on flagging opinion polls and position her as the champion of America's squeezed middle class.

"Everyone deserves a chance to live up to his or her God-given potential. That's the dream we share. That's the fight we must wage," said the 67-year-old former secretary of state in a video released Friday.

"My dad, the son of a factory worker, could start a small business, my mom, who never got to go to college, could see her daughter go to college."

The video looked back on Clinton's four-decade career in public service and sought to counter growing concerns that the grandmother with a millionaire lifestyle is out of touch.

A CNN poll found last week a growing number of Americans say she is not honest and trustworthy (57 percent, up from 49 percent in March).

"Everyday Americans and their families need a champion, a champion who will fight for them every single day and I want to be that champion," Hillary said.

Her speech will break from the past in drawing heavily on her mother's disadvantaged background to show that she understands ordinary people's problems and is motivated by a calling higher than personal ambition.

Dorothy Rodham was abandoned as a child by her parents, sent to live with abusive grandparents and left home to work as a housekeeper at age 14 during the Great Depression.

Clinton's speech, which is expected to be more Rodham than Clinton, will take on women's rights and paint the Republican Party as out of touch with an increasingly diverse electorate.

"She's going to lay out a progressive vision for America and where she thinks the country should go," campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters in New York.

Friends and staff have long described Clinton as warm and fun, and are working to soften her sometimes frosty public image, which helped cost her the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama for the 2008 election.

"That's my job to narrow that perception. I'm not sure that I'm going to have a silver bullet for that," Palmieri said.

Saturday's speech aims to show that Clinton understands the problems facing the middle class and its desire to get ahead.

"We need to explain to people where that comes from, what motivates her and show the person that we know who is very maternal, very warm, engaging," Palmieri added.

The rally will open a new stage in Clinton's campaign, ushering in policy speeches and larger events after eight weeks spent holding small meetings in key states.

The island named after America's famed World War II and New Deal president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is also deeply symbolic.

Not only is Roosevelt's wife Eleanor a personal hero of Clinton's but in speaking at the memorial, analysts say Clinton is choosing to put herself at the heart of his enormous legacy and economic regeneration.

She will deliver her speech at Four Freedoms Park, a memorial to Roosevelt which celebrates the freedoms he outlined in 1941: freedom of speech and of worship; freedom from want and from fear.

In April, Clinton defined "four big fights": building the economy, strengthening families and communities, getting unaccountable money out of politics and protecting the country from threats.

So far Clinton's campaign has been light on policy. But campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters that she was already fighting hard on issues such as making it easier for immigrant families to appeal deportation decisions and calling for an end to the era of mass incarceration.