Mediaboss Marketing

By Dan Balz Chief correspondent November 22 at 11:36 AM

NEW YORK It was all Hillary Clinton, all day, Friday in New York, a day that helped crystallize how much already has been done for the prospective presidential candidate by others and, more importantly, what she has yet to do for herself.

The events included a day-long session for the donors to Ready for Hillary, the political action committee founded in early 2013 to help encourage Clinton to run for president. She did not appear at the event, but many of the Clinton clique were there.

In the evening, it was the former secretary of state herself in the limelight at a black-tie gala hosted by the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, where she was given the History Makers award.

Ready for Hillary started on a shoestring, dismissed by some in Clinton world as a quixotic enterprise. It has grown into something far more important and valuable to a potential candidate whose top-down campaign in 2008 was one (but not the only) factor that led to her defeat to Barack Obama in the contest for the Democratic nomination.

Because of the work of Ready for Hillary, if Clinton decides to run for president, she will instantly have access to what the groups leaders say is a list of roughly 3 million people who have signed up as supporters, volunteers, donors or all of the above. Ready for Hillary will shut down if and when Clinton announces her candidacy. The list cant simply be handed over to her, but she will easily be able to convert fruits of the organizations efforts into a Hillary for President ground army.

Many people deserve credit for this. One is Adam Parkhomenko, the young and tireless co-founder of the group, who has been looking to help make Clinton president of the United States since he was in high school and who overcame the doubters with his energy and a strategic grasp of the techniques and imperatives of the most modern of campaigns.

Another who gets credit is Craig Smith, who has been part of the Clintons world for more than two decades and whose arrival at Ready for Hillary signaled to many longtime Clinton loyalists and donors that the organization deserved their backing, financial and otherwise. About $10 million has been raised since the founding.

Fridays gathering in New York seemed very much like both a Clinton political family reunion and the gathering-before-the-storm. In attendance were scores of people from across the country, many of them instrumental in helping Bill Clinton become president, some who served him as president, and all of them now are just as determined to see Hillary Clinton get to the White House in her own right.

The speakers constituted a whos who of Clinton loyalists, from strategists James Carville and Paul Begala to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. Equally notable were those from Obamas political orbit and others who are now part of the Ready for Hillary operation or any of the other pro-Clinton political committees and organizations that have been founded in the past two years.

Continued here:
Balz: For Democrats, Hillary Clinton just has to say Go. For voters, shell have to say much more.