She's Ready for Her Closeup Mr. DeMille: Hillary Declares

Well, it looks like she’s ready, even if we’re not.

Hillary Clinton is planning to officially launch her US presidential campaign on Sunday while en route to Iowa, a source familiar with the campaign has confirmed to the Guardian.

The former secretary of state is scheduled to declare her second run for president on Twitter at noon eastern time on Sunday, the source told the Guardian, followed by a video and email announcement, then a series of conference calls mapping out a blitzkrieg tour beginning in Iowa and looking ahead to more early primary states.

Clinton’s Sunday schedule is booked beginning with takeoff from New York to Iowa, where speculation has centered for weeks that Clinton was focusing attention for an April campaign launch. Her scheduled calls are with advisers in other key battleground states.

The announcement very likely won’t, sadly, meet the snark standard of Twitter, but the platform is certainly a nod to the millennials. That’s no accident and is a pretty good indication that, although she’s a good 40 years senior, Hillary still knows how to hire staff that keep their fingers on the pulse of how things work.

Hillary Clinton could be the next Barack Obama in one key way — millennials could vote for her because she’s a first.

The opportunity to be part of history and vote for the first female president could drive young voters her way, as it did for Obama as the nation’s first black president.

But pay attention to this little nugget from that mass communications student from Franklin Pierce University (emphasis mine):

Now all Hillary needs to do is get up here and break away from the email and foreign-policy scandals and tell would-be voters — especially young ones — what she’s planning to do for the country if elected.

These are your millennial progressive voters America. Just break away from the gossip, man. Get down to the business of TELLING us what you’ll do. Disturbing, no?

Because look, those scandals actually — sit down young ones — happened. She did indeed wipe her server and very likely fudge some of the rules regarding personal technology use for business. And four people did, in fact, die in Benghazi. As Yoda would say — you kids like Yoda, right? — a difference it does make (I saw those movies in the theater as a little one so some deference please).

There’s a lot more where that came from, too. You could look it up. You should look it up. Because as much as you want to believe it’s just Hillary besting Marco Rubio on social media (I’m sure her selfies with the love of her life Bill will be so much cooler than Marco’s boring conservative ones where he’s just, like, talking about stuff), there’s more to it than that. Just in case you may not have seen this one in the theater either, NPR reminds us of that “vast right-wing conspiracy” thing regarding all those silly little scandals. But no matter, they say, we’re beyond all that now. We’re ready for the feminism and the mainsplaining and the breaking of glass ceilings. (I seriously don’t understand what Chelsea is talking about in that Telegraph piece. What we need is a competent president, male, female, whatever. And I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that suggests competency.)

As I write this, my 20-something nephew just came into the room and asked who we (on the right. He’s Independent but leans away from the left) have on our side who could possibly counter the Hillary wave. Well, there are still a lot of candidates left to declare, I say.

“Stay positive,” I tell him. He’s skeptical.

That scares me (legitimately, because I start to imagine conversations between Hillary and Putin and chew my lip, hard, without thinking.). But I’m taking my own advice. Because this looks to be true.

Of the top ten job-creating states in 2014, according to Gallup, seven were under total Republican control (it would be eight if Nebraska didn’t have a nonpartisan legislature). Of the ten states that created the fewest jobs, only one was under total Republican control and four were under total Democratic control.

These side-by-side economic comparisons—brought to you by federalism, another great conservative idea—have created a personnel shortage in the Democratic Party as voters toss out failed liberal governors. Consider that the Democrats’ presidential frontrunner for 2016 is Hillary Clinton, who’s been on camera without interruption since 1992 yet hasn’t held elected office since 2009. Consider too that her only potential challengers are a one-term senator from Massachusetts and a former governor from Maryland whose protégé was thrashed at the ballot box last year.

But it was in 2012 as well and yet, somehow, Barack Obama won reelection. So the numbers have to be pretty weighty for the conservative candidate, which means the Republican infighting needs to chill, the Independents need to feel like they’re not supporting a conservative devil, and Blue Dog Democrats need to feel comfortable voting outside their party to save their country from the fundamental-transformation-for-the- worse we were promised.

And the millennials? They need to feel like they voted for the coolest candidate, at least until they figure out it’s about more than who has the most followers on Facebook. They will. But we have to reach them until then. Any ideas?