You don't have to be a genius to figure out that Hillary Clinton is already running for President, if your homepage on Daily Kos screams "Hillary For President" every time you log in.
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I'm not claiming that Secretary Clinton has already made any kind of personal decision about when, or whether she will ever start running, but it's obvious enough that what you might as well call "the Clinton Machine" is already in motion.
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The Clinton Machine! It may sound sort of sinister, but even for left-wing Democrats like me, Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office is a long, long way from the worst outcome any of us can imagine. For me Hillary Clinton will always be that idealistic young lawyer who went straight to work for Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, and I can't believe that even 40 years of brutal power-politics could have burned away her core commitment to children.
But for those of us who are hoping against hope for a much more progressive candidate to help us take back the government for the 99%, those little ads have to serve as a wake-up call, if we aren't awake already.
If we wait for the primaries to get organized, we're fucked already, and we might just as well forget about it!
How long will it take to build a fund-raising machine for Elizabeth Warren (or any other progressive candidate) that has even the ghost of a chance of standing up against the tsunami of money that right-wing billionaires and CEOs from the mega-banks will pour into Campaign 2016?
President Obama had already raised $25 million by April 2007, and that was before Citizens United made the price of paying this game even more expensive than the obscene "Buy the Election" system we were already stuck with.
So mutatis mutandis we're probably looking for at least $50 million by April 2015 to fund any kind of serious challenge from the left, and the time to get organized is now.