Hillary Clinton 2016: 3 … 2 … 1 … (Updated)

By all indications, today will be the day when Hillary Clinton officially announces that she will, in fact, be running for president in the 2016 election.

The news will come as no surprise, really, but once this proverbial bell is rung, the tenor of the presidential contest is sure to change irrevocably.

Also read: Hillary Clinton Flaunts Her Surveillance State Baggage

Here’s a preview from The New York Times about what we might expect from her second bid for the White House:

Regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign will open a new chapter in the extraordinary life of a public figure who has captivated and polarized the country since her husband, former President Bill Clinton, declared his intention to run for president in 1991. Mrs. Clinton was the co-star of the Clinton administration, the only first lady ever elected to the United States Senate and a globe-trotting diplomat who surprised her party by serving dutifully under the president who defeated her.

She will embark on her latest — and perhaps last — bid for the White House with nearly universal name recognition and a strong base of support, particularly among women. But in a campaign that will inevitably be about the future, Mrs. Clinton, 67, will enter as a quintessential baby boomer, associated with the 1990s and with the drama of the Bill Clinton years.

This campaign will begin on a small scale and build up to an effort likely to cost more than any presidential bid waged before, with Mrs. Clinton’s supporters and outside “super PACs” looking to raise as much as $2.5 billion in a blitz of donations from Democrats who overwhelmingly support her candidacy. Much of that enthusiasm is tied to the chance to make history by electing a woman president. But some, too, owes to the lack of compelling alternatives in a party trying desperately to hold on to the White House when Republicans control the House and the Senate.

Mrs. Clinton’s expected declaration on Sunday is to be followed by a series of intimate but critical campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire. She will use them to reintroduce herself to voters and begin to lay out the central theme of her candidacy: improving the economic fortunes of the middle class, with an emphasis on increasing wages and reducing income inequality.

As the paper also pointed out, Clinton’s entree into the 2016 race is happening at the beginning of the week that includes National Equal Pay Day, when a typical woman’s pay (based on an average calculated for the purpose) for 2014 and 2015 to date catches up to her male equivalent’s take for 2014 alone.

That auspicious event will happen Tuesday, and no doubt Clinton’s team will be on message about the day’s significance with regard to female voters — a handy way to reconfigure Americans’ income-related associations with Clinton and her clan.

Update: Clinton made good on the running rumors later on Sunday. Click here to see her first campaign advertisement.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson