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Hillary to run for White House in 2016
A video announcement on Ms. Clinton’s official website confirmed the announcement.
A video announcement on Ms. Clinton’s official website confirmed the announcement.
Her announcement was notable, for only 24 hours ago had the incumbent President Barack Obama, given her a resounding endorsement.
Putting to rest months of speculation and rumours, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday announced that she would be running for the office of U.S. president in 2016.

A video announcement on Ms. Clinton’s official website confirmed the announcement, with the presidential candidate saying, “I’m hitting the road to earn your vote.”

Her announcement was notable also for the fact that scarcely 24 hours before it came, a resounding endorsement for her White House run came from the incumbent, President Barack Obama himself.

Speaking at a news conference in Panama Mr. Obama said Ms. Clinton would make an “excellent president,” adding that she was a “formidable candidate in 2008... a great supporter of mine in the general election... an outstanding secretary of state [and his] friend."

I'm running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion. –H https://t.co/w8Hoe1pbtC

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 12, 2015
Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Ms. Clinton said, “I'm running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.”

Her tweet garnered close to 63,000 retweets and 55,000 favourites at the time of writing, and the numbers were rising fast.

However, earlier on Sunday, another potential presidential hopeful, former Governor of Florida and younger brother of former President George W. Bush, John 'Jeb' Bush said in a video pitch, “We must to do better than the Obama-Clinton foreign policy that has damaged relationships with our allies and emboldened our enemies… Better than their failed, big-government policies that grow our debt and stand in the way of real economic growth and prosperity.”

Mr. Bush is not expected to announce his entry into the fray for another few weeks. Earlier in the week sources close to Ms. Clinton’s campaign had leaked to media here her plan to formally enter the race over the weekend, even as several prominent Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky declared their intention to run recently.

The former First Lady and New York Senator was en route to Iowa when she went public with confirmation of her second run for the White House, and earlier media reports suggested that Ms. Clinton’s social media announcement would be followed by a video and email announcement along with conference calls outlining “blitzkrieg tour” from Iowa to other early primary states.

While Ms. Clinton is considered the clear frontrunner to win her party’s nomination, her path to the presidency is likely to be a challenging one, especially with Republicans criticising her use of a private email address and server out of her home in Chappaqua, New York, and in the process deleting potentially thousands of emails and documents relating to the deadly attack on a U.S. government compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Already a Quinnipiac University poll last week hinted lingering public mistrust of Ms. Clinton in the aftermath of the email fiasco, noting that her ratings figures had fallen narrowly behind Mr. Paul’s.

However should she win the primaries, reports here suggested, she may go on to launch a campaign larger than any waged before, with her supporters and outside “super PACs” looking to raise as much as $2.5 billion. While her support base would in part draw numbers from those seeking to make history by electing a woman president, election pundits here noted, many would flock to her campaign from a sheer lack of “compelling alternatives” in the Democratic Party.