Hillary Clinton Next Presidential campaign
It's fitting that Hillary Clinton stands as the natural successor to President Obama. Savvy and politically ambitious, she leveraged her time as first lady to win a Senate seat, run a path-breaking presidential campaign, and serve four years as secretary of state in the Obama White House.
There's an argument—a strong one—that the Democratic Party holds a natural advantage in presidential elections. From the get-go, when you tally the electoral votes of reliably "blue" states in the Northeast, the Rust Belt, and the West Coast, Democrats start with a 37 electoral vote advantage over Republicans, 190 to 153. If you add lean Democratic and lean Republican states to the mix—places where a party consistently wins with margins between 5 and 10 percentage points—Democrats start the 2016 presidential election with 257 electoral votes out of the 270 they need to win. Add Virginia to the total—which has gone blue in four out of its last five statewide elections—and Democrats have the presidency.
"Hillary's not going to dispense with Maggie Williams. She's not going to dispense with Cheryl Mills. She's not going to dispense with Huma Abedin just because the new boy's on the block," says one Democrat close to the Clintons, listing three of Hillary's closest longtime advisers. "The new boy on the block has to learn who those people are, how to accommodate them, and, importantly, how to harness them towards the common enterprise. They all want Hillary elected, but they also all have their own turf."
