Clinton set to unveil Hillary 2.0 on social media

She's ready. Her team is ready. Is the internet ready?

Hillary Clinton is expected to launch her long-awaited second bid for the White House on Sunday, via a video released on social media.

"It's been like a 12-month pregnancy, the wait for this announcement," said one Clinton confidant. "Enough is enough."

The exact date and time of Mrs Clinton's campaign launch was one of the few remaining unknowns about her impending candidacy.

Behind the scenes, she has for months been laying the groundwork for another run, hiring staff and refining the message she will take to voters over the next 20 months as she aims to set aside her devastating loss to President Barack Obama in 2008 to become America's first female president.

It will be a different Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail for 2016, her advisers say.

In a rebrand many have already dubbed "Hillary 2.0", Mrs Clinton will try to connect with voters on a more personal level, drawing not only on her experience as a former first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state, but as a wife, mother and now grandmother since the birth of her daughter Chelsea's first child in September.

After releasing her official announcement, Mrs Clinton is expected to travel first to Iowa, where she was heavily criticised in 2008 for not aggressively courting voters in a state that, as the nation's first to weigh in on the presidential race, has long held an outsize role in the US political landscape. That will be followed by trips to other early battleground states, such as New Hampshire.

While the Republican race for the 2016 nomination remains open, with established candidates such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush expected to compete with lesser known names such as Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Mrs Clinton will enter the Democratic primary as the frontrunner.

In early polls, Mrs Clinton enjoys as much as a 40-point lead over potential rivals for the Democratic nomination, such as former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Lincoln Chafee, the former governor on Rhode Island, on Thursday said he was also considering mounting a challenge, in one of the few early surprises of the 2016 campaign season.

However, in the absence of a dramatic and unexpected turn of events, it is unlikely she will face the kind of challenge she did in 2008, when Mr Obama's phenomenal rise blocked what had once been expected to be her rapid procession to the Democratic nomination.

People close to the soon-to-be-declared campaign say Mrs Clinton will run a smarter, more organised operation than she did seven years ago, reintroducing herself to voters through smaller, more intimate events and focusing on core themes such as inequality, empowering women and boosting middle-class prosperity.

In the lead-up to a formal announcement, however, she has been dogged by questions about her use of a personal email account during her time as secretary state, and a series of articles questioning the propriety of some donations to the Clinton Foundation, the charitable organisation Mrs Clinton, her husband former president Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton have all supported.

Mrs Clinton also used a video announcement to launch her 2008 campaign. However, her catchphrase -"I'm in, and I'm in to win" - was criticised by some as overconfident, and the rollout was marred by infighting among her team.

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