Hillary, can you hear them?
The calls for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run in 2016 reached new fervor on Thursday, with EMILY’s List launching a new push to put a woman on the White House the same day new polling showed the former first lady trouncing her potential Democratic rivals.
The women’s group, which advocates for female pro-choice candidates in elective office, kicked off their new “Madam President” initiative on Thursday morning, and will target voters in battleground states of Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire in the upcoming months, along with online advertising.
While EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock said the group was advocating for women candidates in general, she didn’t deny the former first lady would be a strong candidate.
"There is one name that seems to be getting mentioned more than others," Schriock said, according to NBC Politics. "We do not know if Hillary is going to run—but we're hopeful that she may."
But, Schriock cautioned there were plenty of other women waiting in the wings too, ticking off Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., former Gov. Christine Gregoire, D-Wash., Health and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
A new Quinnipiac University poll out Thursday morning showed Clinton was still the runaway frontrunner more than three years before the next presidential election. The former secretary of state took 65 percent of Democratic votes, with Vice President Joe Biden in a distant second with 13%. Govs. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Martin O’Malley, D-Md., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., were in single digits.
But on this morning’s Gaggle on The Daily Rundown, panelists cautioned that Clinton was leading early 2008 polls, too—and was ultimately upset by then junior senator Barack Obama.
“Having covered the Hillary Clinton campaign the last time around, I would remind everyone these were kind of her numbers then too,” said the Washington Post’s Ann Kornblut. “She was the runaway front runner and she had the Democratic nomination locked up at this point in 2007."