Thomas Fitzgerald: Hillary Clinton super PAC to rally in Philly

Back in 2008, Melissa A. Frey traveled to Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky to campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.

It feels like old times as she volunteers to help organize Tuesday night's Philadelphia rally for a super PAC called Ready for Hillary. Clinton fans are expected to pack Finnigan's Wake in Northern Liberties to dream of 2016 and watch a live telecast of the former first lady, U.S. senator, and secretary of state accepting the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center.

"I'm all aboard, ready to go," Frey said. "It's a passion; she should be president."

Since she left the Obama administration seven months ago, Clinton has essentially been anointed the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016 - if she chooses to run. The early polls have her well ahead of any possible rival, including Vice President Biden.

Unlike other super PACs that spend hundreds of millions on TV advertising tonnage, Ready for Hillary is focused on gathering a grassroots network of volunteers and repeat donors, a strength of President Obama's two campaigns. It has signed up 800,000 supporters and raised $1.25 million in the first half of this year.

While the object of their affections will be only 9/10 of a mile away at the time, Clinton won't be coming to their party. "Hillaryland," the nickname for her network of political advisers and intimates, has kept its distance from the Ready folks, and the super PAC also is eager to avoid anything that could smack of illegal coordination with the potential campaign.

(Though it's worth asking the epistemological question: Is it possible to coordinate with an entity that, technically speaking, does not exist yet, even though everyone assumes that it does?)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, chairman of the Constitution Center board, will hand Clinton her medal at the ceremony. There's an image. A preview of 2016? Dynasty vs. dynasty?

Winning presidential campaigns are, at least on some levels, about the future. For some, however, Clinton carries more baggage than US Airways - her husband's serial infidelities, various "-gate" scandals and pseudo-scandals, the impeachment drama, and, more recently, the fatal attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Is she too much a creature of the 1990s to inspire a new generation of voters?

On the other hand, she may be the most qualified person to seek the presidency in modern history. And to many weary of war and economic pain, a golden glow now surrounds the Clinton era. It did feature the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history.

"There is not one issue she'd have to deal with as president that Hillary has not been involved in," Frey said.

Many Democrats are eager to make history again, and believe that electing the nation's first woman president would be a fitting follow-up to the first African American president.

"I just adore her - Hillary is amazing," said Pam Janvey, 67, of Bensalem, who haunted the Bucks County field office during Clinton's 2008 primary campaign.

"We're from the same era, and I appreciate how difficult it was for her to become what she has become, how much she's done for women," Janvey said. "And it's time to have a woman president. It's time."

Clinton won the 2008 Pennsylvania primary by 10 percentage points over Obama, and she still has the support of former Gov. Ed Rendell and a network of the top Democratic fund-raisers in the state, such as lawyer Alan J. Kessler.

Ready for Hillary has more than 7,000 Facebook fans in the state, and Pennsylvanians have donated $67,500 so far to the super PAC, third-highest among states.

Mark Barbee, 24, said he's inspired by Clinton's experience and her support for marriage equality.

"As a gay candidate, that is an issue that speaks loudly to me," said Barbee, a supervisor in the Montgomery County Prothonotary's Office who is also is running for Borough Council in Bridgeport. "Most of all, she'd make history."

Danny Bauder, a Young Democrats member from Philadelphia, said he's backing Clinton even though it's so early. "I'm concerned with holding the White House, and Hillary's got the chops," he said.