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[h=4]Analysis: For Hillary, a 2nd chance to make 1st impression?[/h]One simple message: It's all about you. Hillary Rodham Clinton launches her second presidential bid with a slick two-minute video that doesn't mention her record, her resume or her policy prescriptions.
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It may be obvious, but USA TODAY's Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page gives four reasons why Hillary Clinton's presidential run matters.
Hillary Clinton addresses the eBay's WIN Summit in San Jose, Calif., on March 11, 2015(Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)
WASHINGTON — Not a word about her record. Not a single policy prescription. Instead, the video that Hillary Clinton posted Sunday afternoon to launch her second bid for the White House has one simple message: It's not about me; it's about you.
The slick, two-minute video shows quick cuts of a carefully diverse collection of Americans explaining what they are getting ready to do over the next year. Among them: two Hispanic brothers starting their first business, an African-American couple expecting their first child, an Asian-American college student looking for her first job, a gay couple planning their wedding and more.
"I'm getting ready to do something, too," Hillary Clinton says as the video is almost over, delivering what might be the least surprising news of the political season to date. "I'm running for president."
Some of the broadly diverse faces featured in Hillary Clinton campaign video on YouTube announcing her run for president.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Hillary for America via YouTube)
Now Clinton's video and the campaign that is about to follow will test a fundamental precept of politics, and life. Can you have a second chance to make a first impression?
The launch is designed not only to signal the themes of her campaign — helping middle-class families — but also to soften the edges on an image that is more firmly set than that of any other 2016 contender from either party.
USA TODAY
Hillary Clinton launches 2016 presidential bid
Hillary Clinton has spent more than a quarter-century in the public eye as first lady, senator and secretary of State, and her life has been scrutinized, investigated and dissected. At this point, according to public polls aggregated by HuffPost Pollster, less than 3% of Americans say they haven't heard enough about Hillary Clinton to have an opinion about her. Another 5% are undecided.
To compare, for former Florida governor Jeb Bush (not exactly a newcomer to the national scene), 16% haven't heard enough to have an opinion of him, and another 16% are undecided. That means about one in three Americans are open to persuasion for the Republican who now leads some national polls.
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For Clinton, in contrast, fewer than one in 10 are open to persuasion. Among those who have made up their minds, opinion is almost evenly split: 48% have a favorable impression, 46% an unfavorable one.
So the video ignores the roles that have made her a presidential contender. It doesn't mention her two terms as the senator from New York or her four years as secretary of State. She doesn't say President Obama's name. There's no sign of her husband — that would be former president Bill Clinton — or even an allusion to her infant granddaughter, Charlotte, who has become a staple of her speeches.
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Instead, she casts herself as a "champion" of working families who have come through tough economic times but still see the deck stacked against them in favor of the powerful and wealthy. That's an echo of the language used by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the hero of some progressive Democrats who would like to see Clinton challenged for the nomination.
The contrast with the two-minute video Hillary Clinton used to launch her last campaign is stark. The 2007 video showed no one except her, sitting on a comfortable couch in her Washington home and declaring, "I'm in to win." Then, she cited her accomplishments as first lady and senator, and she issued a series of campaign promises, from ending the war in Iraq to giving all Americans access to health care.
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This time, she leaves the specifics of what she'd actually do for another time, and she drops the bluster about winning. "I'm hitting the road to earn your vote," she says.
She starts Tuesday with a roundtable discussion at Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, Iowa — the state where her 2008 campaign began to unravel with a humiliating third-place finish in the opening presidential caucuses. During the next six weeks or so, she's expected to meet with small groups of voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere.
Not until next month is she slated to deliver the sort of big, set speech to rally her supporters and outline her proposals — that is, stage the sort of event that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio are using to launch their 2016 campaigns.
While they are battling for the Republican nomination, though, she has the luxury of being the prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic one. Indeed, her opening video is directed not so much at Democratic primary voters as at the voter coalition she'll need to forge to win in November 2016, among them single women, blacks and Hispanics, and the Millennial voters who boosted Obama.
For Clinton, the general election has started, too.
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