Hillary Clinton officially kicks off her campaign for president

Hillary Clinton gets hit a lot for not having a “vision.” For most of the campaign so far, the criticism has fairly centered on her refusal to take positions on some core Democratic issues. Now she’s taking flak for getting too deep in the weeds in the speech she gave at her campaign’s first big rally in New York. But the truth is, Clinton pretty much nailed the vision thing on Saturday.

She’s generally her own worst enemy on that score, constitutionally unable to stop talking about the trees long enough to get her audience to focus on the forest. And that tendency was in full effect again on Saturday.

Yes, but how will Hillary Clinton get Republicans to vote for any this?

That’s the question that kept running through my mind while I listened to Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech Saturday morning. Clinton name-checked almost every center-left policy idea in existence: universal pre-k, guaranteed paid sick days, massive investments in clean energy, rewriting the tax code, raising the minimum wage, and so on.

CLINTON: Thank you! Oh, thank you all! Thank you so very, very much. (Cheers, applause.)

It is wonderful to be here with all of you.

Hillary Clinton held the first big rally of her campaign Saturday at Four Freedoms Park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in New York’s East River. There was one line that stood out because it said so much about the difference between this campaign and the one she lost in 2008.

In her campaign announcement speech, Hillary Clinton said she’s a fighter. But she proved she’s also a meme-maker.

The only time-tested social media strategy Clinton’s campaign avoided? Posting quotes from Bernie Sanders.

With the Supreme Court expected to rule any day now on whether states’ same-sex marriage bans are constitutional, Hillary Clinton has become one of the country’s most prominent politicians in favor of marriage equality.

But Clinton’s prominent support for same-sex marriage rights is part of a sharp shift on the issue over the past few years — a transformation that has, in many ways, mirrored what Americans as a whole went through in the same time span.

Hillary Clinton’s approach to marijuana legalization can best be described as a cautious, leave-it-to-the-states strategy similar to that of the Obama administration. But her wary approach to the issue puts her at slight odds with most voters, more of her Democratic base, and even most voters in some key swing states, all of whom flat-out support legalization.

In her most recent comments on the issue during a CNN town hall last June, Clinton said, “On recreational, you know, states are the laboratories of democracy. We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is.”

Two months after announcing her presidential candidacy, Hillary Clinton is holding the first official rally of her campaign Saturday, on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

As Jonathan Allen wrote, the venue, named in honor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt is no accident. Clinton, searching for a way to excite the progressive base and a rationale for how her presidency would be different, will model herself after FDR.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton gathers her supporters at Four Freedoms Park on New York’s Roosevelt Island for a campaign kickoff rally Saturday, the president she will identify herself with won’t be her husband, Bill Clinton, or either of the presidents who appointed her to posts in their administrations, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. Instead, she will reach back through the generations to the Democrat who wins the highest marks from political scientists, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It was in January 1941, with Axis powers spreading across the globe, that Roosevelt, clutching the sides of the lectern at the front of the House chamber, enunciated his vision for a “world founded on four essential freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He also warned against using America’s assistance for its allies as an excuse for sacrificing the very things “worth fighting for” at home.

Trying to shed an image of elitism, Hillary Clinton will deliver a concise message for the masses during her first big campaign rally Saturday: “It is your time.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner is scheduled to speak at Four Freedoms Park on New York’s Roosevelt Island, a site that offers the symbolism of linking herself to Franklin Roosevelt, the well-to-do president whose New Deal social programs provided work and financial security for Americans during and after the Great Depression.