Hilary Clinton University of Penn Presidential Campaign 2008 - H 2012
Win McNamee/Getty ImagesHaving exhaustively covered her last run for president, the authors of the book Game Change know all about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s inner circle and campaign strategies. And they don’t think that electoral machinery will stay dormant forever.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann said that they foresaw a 2016 run for the presidency for Clinton, even if she has insisted that she won’t seek a return to the White House.
Heilemann was quite confident in his prediction, saying that he was 99.4% sure that Clinton would run; Halperin shared the same overall sentiment, though he was less cocksure about the certainty, though he did not offer any calculations of his own.
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Clinton is retiring from the State Department at the end of President Obama‘s first term in office, and has said that she needs a break — perhaps a permanent one — from the rigors of government service.
“I have made it clear that I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur,” she said during a State Department townhall meeting in January. “But I think after 20 years, and it will be 20 years, of being on the high wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am. Everyone always says that when they leave these jobs.”
With Obama gunning for a second term, talk has been limited about potential successors. Amongst the most popular and logical choices is first term New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who made valuable allies in Hollywood with his successful push to legalize gay marriage in his state. In December, a fundraiser in his honor netted at least $500,000 from Hollywood bigwigs, including Rob and Michele Reiner, JJ Abrams, Candy Spelling and Darren Starr.
The current President has been working to get back in the good graces of a semi-disappointed entertainment industry; he held a fundraiser in Los Angeles in February that was co-hosted by Will Ferrell and included a performance by the Foo Fighters, and invited luminaries such as George Clooney and Harvey Weinstein to last night’s State Dinner at the White House. Megaproducer Jeffrey Katzenberg will hold an “informational session” dinner on behalf of the President’s Super PAC, Priorities USA Action, in late March.
