Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share Supporters gather at Roosevelt Island in New York as Hillary Clinton kicks off her campaign. Michael Monday, USA TODAY 
 
 Hillary Clinton arrives to make her official launch address on Roosevelt Island in New York on June 13, 2015. (Photo: Andrew Gombert, European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign in earnest Saturday with a speech and rally in a setting that evoked a revered Democratic past as much as — if not more than — the party's desired future. 
 
 To explain her vision of prosperity, she cited two voices from the Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and her mother. 
 
 Speaking on an island in the East River named for FDR, she echoed some of that president's anti-Wall Street rhetoric, repeatedly criticizing populist targets such as hedge fund managers, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that stash profits overseas. 
 
 "You see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America's kindergarten teachers combined, and often paying a lower tax rate,'' Clinton said. "So, you have to wonder: 'When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?'" 
 
 And echoing the "four freedoms'' Roosevelt declared in a 1941 speech, Clinton identified "four fights'' she'd wage as president: for equitable economic growth, for national security, for better treatment of children and families and for more efficient and less corrupt government. 
 
 Against this, she slammed the "new voices" in the Republican field who she said are "singing the same old song, a song called Yesterday." 
 
 The Republican National Committee replied that her speech was "chock full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric and ideas from the past.'' 
 
 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share USA TODAY reporter Rick Hampson discusses Hillary Clinton's campaign kick off speech on Roosevelt Island in New York. Michael Monday, USA TODAY 
 
 Clinton joked that there were younger candidates in the race, while also noting the history-making potential of her candidacy. 
 
 "I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States," she said. 
 
 Clinton also cited the experience of her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned by her own parents and suffered a difficult girlhood in the '20s and '30s. 
 
 "My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion,'' Clinton said. "She knew what it was like not to have either one.'' Once, Clinton said, "I asked what kept her going. ... (It was) something very simple: Kindness from someone who believed she mattered.'' 
 
 Later, Clinton returned to that theme. Referring to a single mother she met recently who was struggling to raise three children and attend community college, she said, "I want to be her champion and your champion.'' The crowd of several thousand supporters roared. 
 
 in this and other ways, the speech seemed designed to answer the question of why Clinton wants to president. There were a few specific policy recommendations, but Clinton made it clear that she sees a connection between the people who helped her mother --- a first grade teacher, a benevolent employer -- and herself. 
 
 She's always said Americans (especially needy women and children) could count on her to fight for them; on Saturday she tried to explain why she fights. 
 
 Otherwise, she begins the campaign with many of the same assets and liabilities as when she ran for president eight years ago. As then, it's hard to say which set is more striking. 
 
 Is it the assets — her fundraising ability, her vast network of friends and supporters, her extensive résumé, her peerless name recognition? 
 
 Or is it the liabilities — her aversion for the push and pull of retail politics, her entrenched cadre of critics, her reputation for calculation, her peerless name recognition? 
 
 Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wait for her to arrive on June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island in New York. (Photo: Frank Franklin II, AP) 
 
 Since 2008 she's burnished that résumé with a stint as secretary of State. But now she's also dogged by questions about the attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, her use of private email as secretary, and donations to the charitable foundation created by her husband, Bill, after he left the White House. 
 
 As in 2008, she leads all her rivals, Republican and Democratic, in the polls. 
 
 As in 2008, she must convince voters that another Clinton in the White House — make that two Clintons — is a good thing. 
 
 As in 2008, Iraq — a specter that haunted her campaign (she voted for the invasion but came to oppose the war) — will be an issue, especially with discussion this week of an expanded U.S. military role in the country. 
 
 But there are differences this year, too. 
 
 In 2008, Clinton faced a much more daunting lineup of rivals for the Democratic nomination, including Barack Obama, former vice presidential nominee John Edwards and future vice president Joe Biden. 
 
 One issue in 2008 — Can Americans trust a woman as commander in chief? — seems less pressing in light of Clinton's experience as secretary of State.That includes, as she pointed out Saturday, being in the White House Situation Room "when we got (Osama) bin Laden.'' 
 
 Hillary Clinton makes her official launch address on Roosevelt Island in New York on June 13, 2015. (Photo: Andrew Gombert, European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 The Roosevelt Island event, which Clinton's campaign billed as her "official launch speech,'' felt like the symbolic and emotional start of what should be a fascinating campaign by a riveting political personality. 
 
 The setting cast Clinton, once a GOP "Goldwater Girl'' volunteer in the 1964 presidential election, as heir to the Roosevelts -- Franklin and first lady Eleanor --and thus its logical nominee. 
 
 But cladding herself in the mantle of a man who has been dead for 71 years (or a woman dead for 54) might be risky for someone who in 2008 suffered in comparison to a younger candidate promising a future summed up on posters by the words "HOPE'' and "CHANGE.'' 
 
 Then-senator Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., left, and then-senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., shake hands after a Democratic presidential debate in Cleveland in this Feb. 26, 2008, file photo. (Photo: Mark Duncan, AP) 
 
 Saturday's event, which was attended by Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, comes amid signs of declines in Hillary's popularity. This month a CNN poll found 57% of Americans think she is not honest and trustworthy, up from 49% three months ago. And a Washington Post/ ABC News poll put Clinton's favorability at 45% — her lowest since April 2008. 
 
 Meanwhile, a Democratic candidate on her left, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has been drawing large, enthusiastic crowds in Iowa, site of the first key vote early next year. 
 
 In Iowa, and possibly all the way to November 2016, political suspense will be based on the same question as eight years ago: Can Hillary Clinton, for all her accomplishments, supporters and celebrity, win a close, tough, protracted electoral contest? 
 
 It's an issue raised by her fall-from-ahead loss to Obama in 2008, and not really answered by wins in two mismatch races for U.S. Senate from New York. Hillary Clinton sometimes seems as unnatural a campaigner as her husband was a natural. 
 
 When she announced eight years ago, her campaign posted on its website a memo by pollster Mark Penn that began with the frank admission that "People are always asking, 'Can Hillary Clinton win the presidency?' …'' 
 
 Eight years later, they still are. 
 
 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share Hillary Clinton brought a different kind of energy to her campaign kick off on Roosevelt Island when compared to her campaign eight years ago. Michael Monday, USA TODAY 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1JLLfcY ||||| Seven years after she left the presidential stage thanking supporters for putting “18 million cracks” in the highest glass ceiling, Hillary Clinton kicked off her campaign Saturday with a wink to her past, pointing out that she was launching under blue Manhattan skies, “with absolutely no ceilings.” 
 
 With 1 World Trade Center rising behind her podium on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, Clinton embraced the historic nature of her run explicitly, stating with pride that while she isn’t the youngest candidate in the race, “I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States, and the first grandmother as well.” 
 
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 In a 45-minute speech that often felt more like a State of the Union address than a rousing campaign rally, Clinton ranged widely, throwing in homages to past Democratic presidents, attacks on today’s Republicans, appeals to women, LGBT groups, climate activists, workers, and a hodge-podge of other traditional progressive causes. 
 
 If there was a clear theme to Clinton’s remarks, it was the “four fights” she vowed to wage on behalf of “everyday Americans”: building an economy for tomorrow, strengthening America and our core values, and revitalizing our democracy, in the campaign’s boiled-down language. 
 
 Her candidacy, she said, would be a battle “for everyone who’s been knocked down but refused to be knocked out.” 
 
 Dressed in a royal blue pantsuit, Clinton pitched herself — to a crowd of what the campaign said was around 5,500 supporters — as a reliably progressive alternative to Republican candidates with outdated ideas, and the best chance for Americans to have a “new beginning.” 
 
 “It’s not 1941, or 1993, or even 2009,” she said. “We face new challenges in our economy and our democracy.” 
 
 But she also looked backward enough to hail the administrations of President Barack Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, lauding both men as “guided by the fundamental American belief that real and lasting prosperity must be built by all and shared by all.” 
 
 Quoting from the lyrics of The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” the 67-year-old Clinton painted Republicans as the party of the past. 
 
 “They’re all singing the same song,” she said, characterizing her opponents’ views as hostile to middle-class workers, gays, women, and the poor. “They believe in yesterday.” 
 
 “Fundamentally,” she said, “they reject what it takes to build an inclusive economy. It takes an inclusive society.” 
 
 When Republicans were running the country, she charged, they favored the wealthy over everyone else. “What happened?” she asked, and the crowd booed. 
 
 Clinton hit on most key planks of the Democrats’ longstanding policy agenda while providing few details, promising to roll out specific proposals in the months ahead. 
 
 She vowed to fight to raise the minimum wage, but didn’t say by how much. 
 
 She said she would work for paid family leave and affordable college education, and called climate change “one of the defining threats of our time.” 
 
 She repeated her call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and get big money out of politics. 
 
 She promised to “re-write the tax code” so it rewards “hard work and investments here at home, not quick trades or stashing profits overseas.” 
 
 She praised “the rise of global trade” but said it had “also displaced jobs and undercut wages for millions of Americans.” 
 
 And she employed the populist rhetoric that she has been testing out in roundtables on the trail. “While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet,” she said, “you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.” 
 
 She said she was fighting not just for the middle class but for the poor, “for the factory workers and food service workers who stand on their feet all day. For the nurses who work the night shift. For the truckers who drive for hours and the farmers who feed us. For the veterans who serve our country. For the small business owners who took a risk.” 
 
 Her biggest applause line, however, came in blasting pro-life Republicans. “They shame and blame women, rather than respect our right to make our own reproductive health decisions,” she said. 
 
 Clinton’s first rally and major vision speech came two months to the day after she officially entered the race with a YouTube video announcing her candidacy. 
 
 The address was delayed into June, in part because fundraising concerns took priority over generating enthusiasm with a big rally, and in part because her advisers were waiting for a clear moment with no Republican entering the race and stealing the spotlight. 
 
 For the past eight weeks, Clinton has spent most of her time attending house party fundraisers and traveling to the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada to participate in small, controlled roundtables, where she asked more questions than she answered. 
 
 She has also for the most part steered clear of the press, answering only a handful of questions posed by the large press corps that has been following her early campaign stops. Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to capitalize on a perception that she is untrustworthy and to keep in the headlines controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation and her email use at the State Department that have vexed her campaign. 
 
 A stormy forecast had threatened Clinton’s big kickoff event until late in the week, and the backup plan for the re-launch party was only to hope it wouldn’t rain. 
 
 The campaign got lucky: Saturday morning was a sunny day, and New Yorkers came dressed down in shorts, some even wearing Clinton-Gore 1992 T-shirts. 
 
 An overflow area where supporters could watch the speech on a large screen, however, remained empty. Many of Clinton’s senior staff members, including Huma Abedin and communications director Jennifer Palmieri, gathered in the back to watch the candidate on the big screen. 
 
 While campaign operatives previewed the speech as a bold, progressive vision for the country’s future, some left-leaning groups said they were left disappointed. 
 
 “This was mostly a typical Democratic speech,” said Adam Green, co-founded of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Clinton’s allusions to reining in Wall Street, ending corporate tax havens, and addressing inequality open the door to a corporate accountability agenda [are welcome] — but Americans needs to see specifics.” 
 
 One of Clinton’s opponents in the Democratic primary was also quick to criticize her speech as offering little in new ideas. 
 
 “Democrats, and in fact, our nation, will not make progress with status-quo thinking,” said Bill Hyers, senior strategist for former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley’s campaign. 
 
 Clinton was joined on stage after her speech by Bill Clinton, as well as Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. 
 
 In typical Bill Clinton fashion, he stayed shaking hands and feeding off the energy of the crowd for at least 30 minutes after the candidate had wrapped up her speech.
– Hillary Clinton put the small-scale events on the back burner today to give the first major speech of her campaign before thousands of supporters on New York City's Roosevelt Island. In Politico's view, she embraced a "progressive agenda," ticking off issues such as minimum wage, family leave, debt-free college, and climate change. AP adds that she emphasized her role as a defender of Americans hit hard in the recession, while USA Today has her invoking the "mantle of FDR." The Washington Post notes that she mixed policy with the personal, especially with references to her mother. Some of the quotes getting highlighted: "I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I'll be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States, and the first grandmother as well." "It's America's basic bargain. If you do your part, you ought to be able to get ahead, and when everybody does their part, America gets ahead, too. That bargain inspired generations of American families, including my own." "Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain, too. You brought our country back. Now it's time, your time, to secure the gains and move ahead." "I have been called many things by many people. Quitter is not one of them." She added that she got that from her mother, Dorothy Rodham. "Because some people believed in [my mother], she believed in me."