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DES MOINES Shes an icon known across the world by just her first name, but when Hillary Rodham Clinton touches down here in Iowa this week to kick off her second presidential campaign, she will be greeted by enormous expectations of intimacy.

Jan Bauer, chairwoman of the Story County Democrats, expects to be courted persistently by Clinton and her aides before deciding whom to support. Ill be waiting to see how aggressively pursued I am, she said.

Down the interstate in Urbandale, party organizer Jerry Tormey wants the former secretary of state to show up at his annual Flag Day event on June 14, which in the past has drawn all of 75 people for free hot dogs and a raffle. After all, he warned, Dark horses have won Iowa before.

Across the state in Cedar Rapids, Linda Langston recently told Clintons national campaign manager-in-waiting, Robby Mook, that Clinton ought to surprise folks here.

We know everything about her maybe not the color of her underwear, but we know just about everything else about this woman, said Langston, a Linn County supervisor. But there still is an element of surprise that could be there if she could get past her concern of how shes portrayed and just be her genuine self.

On Election Day in 2016, the next president will be chosen by well over 100 million people. But for Clinton, the journey to the White House starts this week before the proud Democratic activists in this small Midwestern state entitled, yes, and perhaps a bit petulant, but each nevertheless wanting to be listened to, touched and wooed.

They expect to see Clinton in their living rooms and neighborhood coffee shops and bars, fleshing out a robust and progressive agenda on issues ranging from Wall Street reform to Islamist terrorists to climate change but also hanging out to answer questions, take some selfies or simply chitchat.

We really are that spoiled, said Bret Nilles, chairman of the Linn County Democrats.

Iowa Democrats have been waiting eight years for a competitive caucus campaign, and they demand that Clinton wage one even if theres no Barack Obama or John Edwards looming as formidable opponents.

So far, Clinton and her allies have signaled she will.

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Iowa Democrats want Hillary Clinton to woo them - The ...

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One day before Hillary Clinton is expected to announce her presidential bid, President Obama said today she would make an "excellent president."

"She was a formidable candidate in 2008. She was a great supporter of mine in the general election. She was an outstanding secretary of state. She is my friend. I think she would be an excellent president," Obama said at a news conference in Panama.

"When she makes a decision to announce, I'm confident she will be very clear about her vision for the country moving forward if she announces," he added.

The president said he believes that Clinton's role as secretary of state has amply prepared her to "handle herself very well in any conversations and debates around foreign policy.

"If she decides to run, she's going to have some strong messages to deliver," he said.

Asked whether he thinks the Democratic field is wide open, Obama declined to weigh in.

"Not only have I run my last election, but I am not in the business of prognosticating future elections," he said. "That's your job and there is no shortage of people who are happy to opine on that. I will not be one."

Clinton is expected to announce her presidential campaign on social media on Sunday.

During the 2008 election, Obama and Clinton faced off in a brutal primary to decide the Democratic presidential nominee. Obama ultimately secured the nomination and won the presidency, but when he arrived at the White House, he brought Clinton along with him, selecting her as secretary of state and forming a close working relationship.

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President Obama Says Hillary Clinton Would Be an ...

CHICAGO --

The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state is expected to make her 2016 effort official Sunday with an online video followed by small events with residents of early-voting states over the days ahead. The campaign's opening strategy was described ahead of the announcement by two senior advisers who requested anonymity to discuss her plans.

If Clinton's strategy sounds familiar, it might be because President Barack Obama framed the choice for voters in 2012 as between Democrats focused on the middle class and Republicans wanting to protect the wealthy and return to policies that led to the Great Recession.

Clinton intends to sell herself as being able to work with Congress, businesses and world leaders, the advisers said Saturday. That approach could be perceived as a critique of Obama, who has largely been unable to fulfill his pledge to end Washington's intense partisanship and found much of his presidency stymied by gridlock with Congress.

In New York on Saturday, at the final event put on by "Ready for Hillary," a group not connected with her campaign that's worked for the past few years to stoke excitement for it, enthusiastic supporters joined elected officials and local party leaders to celebrate the launch to come.

"After she left the State Department she could have slipped into grandmother-hood, but people want to call her back into public service," said Jarret Berg, 29, a Democratic staffer in the New York legislature. "It's time for her."

As her official announcement loomed, the Republican National Committee linked Clinton to Obama, a regular focus of criticism from the GOP. "All Hillary Clinton is offering is a continuation of the same big government ideas that have grown Washington instead of the middle class," RNC spokesman Michael Short said in a statement Saturday. "That's why voters want fresh leadership and a new direction, not four more years of Obama's failed policies."

Clinton is not expected to roll out detailed policy positions in the first weeks of her campaign. Advisers said she planned to talk about ways families can increase take-home pay, the importance of expanding early childhood education and making higher education more affordable.

It's not yet clear whether that will include a noticeable break with Obama on economic policy. The GOP has hammered Obama's approach as anti-business and insufficient in the wake of the recession. The White House says the economy has improved significantly in recent years.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent in March, but manufacturing and new home construction slowed, cheaper gas has yet to ignite consumer spending and participation in the labor force remains sluggish.

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Hillary Clinton to announce presidential candidacy Sunday morning

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With an announcement on social media, she will pick up where she left off 7 years ago.

By Annie Karni

4/12/15 7:18 AM EDT

Updated 4/12/15 9:59 AM EDT

With much anticipation but little drama, Hillary Clinton is expected to officially announce Sunday she is running for president, a launch that will begin with a message on social media and continue over the next week with campaign visits to Iowa and New Hampshire.

The announcement marks an end to the first, awkward phase of Clintons roll-out a non-campaign that has frustrated Democrats who were anxious for her to turn the ignition switch on a campaign that the party is deeply invested in.

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For months Ive been getting calls from people who donate good money, asking when are we having an event, who are we writing a check to, said Jay Jacobs, a prominent New York Democrat, and a longtime Clinton friend and fundraiser. Its completely topsy-turvy. The groundswell has been percolating for so long. This thing had to get going, I cant imagine we could have waited much longer. I cant tell you how many phone calls I get with people chomping at the bit.

For the past year, the former secretary of state has been treated like a candidate while lacking the structure around her to support one. That has led to some rusty moments as Clinton has sometimes painfully re-entered public life, outside of the State Departments protective bubble.

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Hillary Clinton readies presidential launch

Hillary Rodham Clinton will officially announce shes a candidate for the presidency on Sunday, but shes been running in place for the better part of two years.

Clinton was only out of the State Department a few months in the late spring of 2013, a period shes often described as one of apolitical reflection, relaxation and recharging, when friends began fielding interesting phone calls from her D.C. mansion, known as Whitehaven. One person in Clintons orbit at the time recalls picking up the phone and hearing Hello! Its Hillary! followed by a barrage of detailed queries about the organizational health of state parties in two key presidential battleground states Florida (bad) and Ohio (much, much worse).

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Thats when I knew she was going to do it, said the person, who also recalled sitting through one Im-never-doing-this-again conversation with Clinton after the 2008 election. To me she was always basically a yes, and wanted people to make the case for no. But the case for yes was always stronger.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who served as national party chairman during Bill Clintons second term, had a similar experience this time the topic was African-American politics a couple of months later at the June 2013 funeral of longtime Philadelphia congressman Bill Gray.

She asked me a lot of questions about people who attended that would only have been relevant for someone who would make use of those connections in the future as a candidate for office, he said. It was a surprise to me that she had made up her mind so early.

Around the same time, Clinton joined Twitter, and made her intentions tantalizingly unclear, describing herself as Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD

Even if most people around Clinton knew she would run, the candidate-to-be left that TBD deliberately open for months leaving herself latitude to ditch the entire enterprise if she got cold feet or faced a serious Democratic challenger. Its axiomatic to the point of clich to say that Clinton, the instant Democratic frontrunner, has wanted to be the first woman president since earliest girlhood in Chicago. The idea that she is unquenchably ambitious has embedded itself in the American consciousness, in part because she has been less artful about cloaking it in part because its true. In its 2016 Clinton kickoff skit, Saturday Night Live fabricated a 1940s sonogram of in-utero Hillary Rodham waving a campaign sign.

The truth is considerably more complicated. Clinton is dead-set on avoiding the mistakes of 08, and approved a series of secret reports studying the 2008 campaign in minute detail, friends and advisers say. But for all her calculation, shes been surprisingly noncommittal and reluctant to leave her comfortable double-mansion life for the grinding, grubby, lacerating realities of another campaign, fully exposed to the media horde she fears, loathes and fights.

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Hillary Clinton's slow walk to 'yes'