Hillary Clinton has found her next role in politics: powering the resistance.
The former presidential candidate will help launch a new entity dedicated to funding and supporting the grassroots activists and organizers, with a focus on translating the energy of the opposition movement into organizing and tangible results. The project, first reported this week by Axios, marks Clintons first political effort since her loss.
In recent interviews people familiar with the plans outlined a project that is still very much in the works, with details as major name and launch date still not final.
A Clinton spokesman, Nick Merrill, declined to comment on the plans.
The central mission of the organization, likely to be structured as a PAC, will be selecting a small but diverse number of progressive groups, new, old, large, small, to not only fund and support those groups, but build a cooperative well-organized network.
For two months, Clinton has worked on plans for the project alongside three partners including Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and Democratic Party chair, and another failed presidential candidate. The idea behind the group, to seed members of the loose movement on the left incited by President Donald Trump, is a role Dean sees as unique and needed. Were not looking to duplicate or replace the DNC or the DCCC or all that stuff, he said of two central party committees. Were looking to give these folks the opportunity to do the building theyre already doing on their terms, but in a more organized way, when the one hand knows what the other hand is doing.
Its an unlikely image of Clinton at age 69. The presidential campaigns are done. The book is closed for good on electoral politics. And Clinton, a mainstay of institutional politics, disliked on the left, decides to carve out a place for herself the ranks of the grassroots. In other ways, though, it is the one place she sees traces of her own campaign.
