Hillary Clinton can seem like the anomalous candidate in the 2016 race, where creatures of the establishment were discarded by voters and angry outsiders in both parties experienced the most unlikely rises.

But Clinton is still standing -- despite deep scars left by the email scandal that her rivals hoped would disqualify her – and has now made history as the first woman to become the nominee of a major party.


That the former first lady, senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state has spent two decades in the public eye has been both an asset and a liability on the rocky journey to Philadelphia; she is running as someone with the experience to pass the commander-in-chief test, a serious candidate who wants to build on the policies of President Obama. Clinton, her aides like to say, is the least-known, well-known woman in the world.

But, as Obama said in making his pitch about his former rival, “Sometimes we take somebody who’s been in the trenches, and fought the good fight, and been steady, for granted.”

Clinton’s challenges are even greater than that, though. The familiarity of her history and her husband’s has contributed to a deeply-rooted feeling of distrust among voters.

About 64 percent of Americans say they do not trust her, and the 69 percent approval rating she held when she left the State Department in 2013 has evaporated, and then some -- about 53 percent of registered voters now say they hold an unfavorable view of her. It will be her challenge over the next four months to convince voters that she is the more capable contender to do the job.

Over the past 18 months, POLITICO has not only chronicled the day-to-day of Clinton’s campaign; we have looked back on her life since her days as first lady of Arkansas, and profiled those key loyal aides who have remained part of her inner circle for as long as she’s been on the national stage.

Michael Kruse revisited the hot Arkansas summer of 1983, when Hillary Clinton undertook her first big policy initiative on education reform as First Lady. Glenn Thrush dove deep into the most defining partnership of the Democratic party today: the one between Clinton and President Obama. Thrush and I also got inside the biggest issue that has hampered her campaign since day one: the emails, examining the war within her campaign over how to handle the scandal that just wouldn’t go away. Indira Lakshmanan explored the difference between Clinton as a candidate and Clinton as secretary of state, concluding that there really are “two Hillarys.”

I wrote about her former chief of staff and onetime White House counsel Cheryl Mills, who emerged in the email dump as the only person who tells Clinton “no.” I also took a look at Huma Abedin’s rise over the past 19 years at Clinton’s side, from White House intern to powerful inner circle. POLITICO’s proudest millennial Ben Schreckinger gave us “A Millennial’s Guide to the Nineties,” for the under-30 set who might not remember the biggest scandals of Bill Clinton’s White House. Ken Vogel traveled to the Western Sahara last year to investigate the Clintons’ long and lucrative relationship with Morocco and the complicated overlap between Clinton’s diplomatic portfolio at the State Department and the funding of her family’s foundation. And finally, Gail Sheehy wrote about Clinton’s lifetime of constructed identities, and how she has finally come into her own.

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1. "Party of Two: How Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (with help from Elizabeth Warren) are trying to save the Democratic establishment," by Glenn Thrush



2. “The Only Person Who Says No To Clinton: Cheryl Mills’ tart emails stand out amid the shameless flattery of other Clinton aides,” by Annie Karni



3. “Hillary’s Shadow: After years as the former secretary of state’s loyal assistant, Huma Abedin is emerging as a campaign power center of her own,” by Annie Karni



4. “A Millennial’s Guide to the Nineties: From Whitewater to Troopergate, here’s everything you don’t remember about the Clintons,” by Ben Schreckinger



5. “The Brothers Rodham: Hillary’s brothers are part of a long tradition of embarrassing political siblings,” by Todd S. Purdum



6. “The Secret lives of Hillary and Bill in the White House: Broken lamps, shouting matches, sneaking away to the pool—and other scenes from the Clinton residence during the Lewinsky scandal,” by Kate Andersen Brower



7. “The Long, Hot Summer Hillary Became a Politician: For Clinton, the Arkansas education reform of 1983 was her first high-profile public policy initiative,” by Michael Kruse



8. “The King and Queen of Haiti: There’s no country that more clearly illustrates the confusing nexus of Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Bill Clinton’s foundation than Haiti—America’s poorest neighbor,” by Jonathan M. Katz



9. “’Hillary Clinton Sold Her Soul When They Accepted That Money’: The king of Morocco, the Clintons and a problem that just won’t go away,” by Kenneth P. Vogel



10. “Hillary’s Sixties Surge: It’s taken a career in the spotlight, but Hillary Clinton finally seems to be comfortable with her age and her gender,” by Gail Sheehy



11. “What 12,000 Emails Tell Us About Being Hillary Clinton: My window into four years of HRC’s over-scheduled, under-rested, BlackBerry-centric life,” by Michael Kruse



12. “A ‘Cancer’ on the Clinton Candidacy: Inside the seven-month war within her campaign over the email scandal that just wouldn’t go away,” by Glenn Thrush and Annie Karni



13. “The Mystery of the Two Hillarys: I covered her as a candidate, and then as secretary of state—and it was like two totally different people,” by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

