Hillary says ‘I’m In to Win’ 2008 race

Clinton, 59, called for “bold but practical changes” in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding “a right end” to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

“I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,” Clinton said on the Web site. “After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York and two landslide wins, I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.”

If successful, Clinton would be the first female presidential nominee of a major American political party, and she would become the first spouse of a former president to seek a return to the White House.

Yet Clinton has become a major political figure in her own right: She is broadly popular with women, African-Americans, and other core groups in the Democratic Party, and she is one of the party’s best fund-raisers and most sought-after speakers. While she is not associated with any major piece of legislation, she is widely regarded as an effective, thoughtful lawmaker who has built bipartisan ties.

Her early support for the Iraq war, however, and her unpopularity in the 1990s have stirred doubts among Democrats about whether she can win the presidency. And she remains an enigma and a caricature to many people: Radically liberal, coldly ambitious, or ethically compromised.

Senator Clinton is the seventh Democrat to join the likely field of candidates who will officially start vying for the nomination next January in the Iowa presidential caucuses.

She joins Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who announced plans to run on Tuesday; former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the 2004 vice presidential nominee; Senators Joseph R Biden Jr of Delaware and Christopher J Dodd of Connecticut; former Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa; and Representative Dennis J Kucinich of Ohio. An eighth, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, is expected to declare on Sunday that he is forming an exploratory committee as well.

Like Clinton, Obama is also poised to make history. If successful in the primaries, he would be the first African-American to win the Democratic nomination. He is her only real rival at this point in drawing huge crowds of voters at political stops and in driving the 2008 political discussion in the media.

The past week alone has shown the ways that the Clinton and Obama candidacies are intersecting: He announced Tuesday and dominated political coverage in the media; she swept in on Wednesday, fresh from her trip to Iraq, and appeared on the network morning shows to talk about the war (pushing the news of his candidacy to second place); later that day, he issued a statement embracing a cap on American troops in Iraq, hours after she had made a similar proposal. And they are now both jockeying for donors in New York, Hollywood, and elsewhere.

Clinton’s political message flows from centrist Democratic views¿or, as she likes to say, common sense. She supports abortion rights, for instance, but has called abortion a “tragic choice” and speaks urgently about the need for more adoptions. She supports a ban on flag burning, but would not go so far as to amend the Constitution, as some conservatives wish. She supports gay rights generally, but not gay marriage.

On Iraq, perhaps the most defining issue for Democratic candidates in the race at this stage, Clinton voted in October 2002 to authorise President Bush to use military force. As is her style, Clinton, a Wellesley-educated, Yale-trained lawyer, offered arguments for and against that vote on the floor of the Senate that day; she urged more diplomatic efforts, but also said of her vote, “I cast it with conviction.”

While she has not explicitly repudiated that vote, she has moved away from it, becoming a forceful critic of the White House war strategy and saying last month that she would not vote the same way today.

–PATRICK HEALY