UPDATED: Hillary Clinton Is Officially Running For President, Email To Supporters Says

A top Hillary Clinton aide has just announced she is running to become the next President of the United States of America. 

She has been the First Lady of Arkansas, the First Lady of the United States of America, the U.S. Senator from New York, the U.S. Secretary of State, but rarely ever a private citizen. Moments ago, Hillary Clinton announced she is officially seeking the Democratic nomination to become the 45th President of the United States of America, via an email to supporters from top aide John Podesta, as CNBC reported.

The news came via an email to party stalwarts from John Podesta, a top Clinton advisor and a loyalist, who said Clinton would soon embark on a tour in Iowa.

Clinton, who ran unsuccessfully in 2008 against then Senator Barack Obama, has long been rumored and sometimes hinted she would be running. On Friday, a “leak” announced that she would make her decision public today.

Unlike the two current Republican candidates for president, Clinton is expected to make her formal announcement via social media later today without a scheduled public speech. no fire-and-brimstone pronouncements, no unfulfillable promises, just a mature and adult appeal.

Today’s announcement is considered a “soft launch.” Clinton will head to Iowa and then other early voting states, to sit down one-on-one in living rooms and restaurants, so she can connect directly with voters, where she performs best.

She is clearly taking all the lessons she has learned, both from her challenged 2008 campaign – during which supporters and opponents said she took her “inevitability” for the nomination for granted, and from her earlier life, especially her Senate campaign – and running a campaign on her own terms.

Clinton does not like to speak before large crowds, but prefers more intimate engagements, her advisors say. Her New York Senate run, as MSNBC’s Chuck Todd observed, was extensive but local, with Clinton hitting every part of the state, like county fairs, and letting the people get to know her. Supporters are looking for a similar campaign, which they believe will showcase Clinton as more personal and in charge than her 2008 bid did.

“I have always believed that every child should have the chance to live up to his or her God-given potential,” Clinton wrote Friday in a quietly published epilogue to her memoir, detailing, apparently, why she wants to be President. “That principle has animated my entire career, from my earliest days as a young attorney with the Children’s Defense Fund straight through to my service in the Senate and as Secretary of State. Now that I’m a grandmother, I believe it even more passionately.”

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Hillary Clinton earned her Bachelors at Wellesley and her law degree at Yale. She is 67, the mother of Chelsea Clinton, and a grandmother to the daughter of Chelsea and Mark Mezvinsky. Since 1975 she has been married to Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States.

If she wins the White House, Hillary Clinton would be the first woman President. 

UPDATE I – 3:11 PM EDT:

UPDATE II – 4:22 PM EDT:

Hillary Clinton Launches Presidential Campaign Website, Video Includes Gay Couples (And Cute Puppy)

 

This is a developing news story and will be updated. 

 

Image by U.S. Department of State via Flickr