Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left, and Sen. Kay Hagan, right, celebrate with supporters during a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photo / AP
There was no doubt in Rachel Mannlein-Hochman's mind. As she stood in a crowd of cheering Democrats waiting for Hillary Clinton to appear on stage in North Carolina, she pointed to the button on her lapel: Hillary 2016.
"She's going to run again," Mannlein-Hochman said. "She's taking a second chance
for herself and she's giving the country a second chance to elect her."
Technically, Clinton was in North Carolina to urge support for Kay Hagan, who is fighting to hold on to her Senate seat in next week's midterm elections. But for her ardent supporters, the rally was a chance to get close to their heroine and urge her to rewrite history. For many of the 18 million Americans who voted for Clinton in 2008, the election that year was a mistake that put the wrong Democrat in the White House. And 2016 is an opportunity to correct it.
That was certainly the case for Riki Harper, 39. "I wasn't for [Barack] Obama then and I'm still not really now. I thought it was Hillary's time."
Lee Calvert, 51, and his friend Mark Donahue said they had donated to the Clinton campaign in 2008 and were prepared to do so again. Reflecting on the birth of her 1-month-old grandchild, Charlotte, Clinton said "there's nothing that gets your mind concentrated more about the future" than the birth of a new child - a line that sparked cries of "Run, Hillary, run!"
