It's time for a female president of the US, says Clinton

Hilary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton used the opening rally of her campaign yesterday to cast her ambition to be the first female president as part of the story of American progress.

In a speech that mixed policy with personal stories, Clinton told of how her mother was born before women had the right to vote and died without ever seeing a female leader of the United States.

Clinton rarely speaks about her mother's difficult life and troubled upbringing, but yesterday she told supporters: "I wish she could have seen the America that we're going to build together. An America where a father can tell his daughter: Yes, you can be anything you want to be, even president of the United States."

Over the course of a 45-minute speech, she laid out a checklist of populist positions from the environment to education, gay rights to immigration.

As Bill and Chelsea Clinton looked on, she denounced the influence of money in American politics and promised a strong stand on foreign policy.

But she also spoke in personal terms about her mother Dorothy Rodham, who grew up in an abusive home and was once confined to her room for an entire year for going out on Hallowe'en.

Clinton credited her mother, who died in 2011 at the age of 92, with teaching her tenacity and giving her the strength to try once more to crack what she called "the highest, hardest glass ceiling" in American politics.

The rally on Roosevelt Island, off Manhattan, was delivered nearly seven years to the day after Clinton conceded defeat to Barack Obama in 2008.

While she is the overwhelming favourite to be the Democratic candidate next year, questions linger over whether America may opt for a younger generation rather than the 67-year-old Clinton. She made light of the concern, telling the crowd: "I may not be the youngest candidate in this race but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the US."

Clinton also assailed the growing pool of Republicans challengers, saying: "We've heard this tune before and we know how it turns out."

The Republican field will grow larger still tomorrow when Jeb Bush, the younger brother of George W. Bush, officially declares his own candidacy - raising the prospect of a rerun of 1992's Bush-Clinton contest.

He has run a de facto race for six months, one that has yet to meet backers' high hopes. His last name guarantees him the highest visibility of any of the many Republicans in the field. But while US media and polls anointed him his party's early frontrunner for 2016, he has not yet lived up to the hype.Telegraph Group Ltd, AFP