Hillary Clinton gets another challenger in Jim Webb

WASHINGTON - Add another Democrat to the list of long-shots challenging Hillary Clinton.

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb officially announced his presidential bid on Thursday, and was the first to admit he faces an uphill battle.

“I understand the odds, particularly in today’s political climate where fair debate is so often drowned out by huge sums of money,” he said in a statement on his website. “But our country needs a fresh approach to solving the problems that confront us and too often unnecessarily divide us.”



Webb, a one-term senator and decorated former Marine, began his career as a Democrat, became a Republican, served as President Reagan’s Navy Secretary, and rejoined the Democratic Party in protest over the Iraq War.

While he’s a huge underdog for the nomination, Webb’s military credentials give him a platform to beat up on Clinton over foreign policy.

“Let me assure you, as President I would not have urged an invasion of Iraq, nor as a Senator would I have voted to authorize it,” he said in the letter, tweaking Clinton.

Webb, 69, also led the charge for prison sentencing reform while in the Senate, helping make it a bipartisan cause long before other politicians began jumping on the bandwagon.

But his idiosyncratic views could hold him back - he strongly opposes affirmative action and recently was one of the only candidates in either party to have anything nice to say about the Confederate flag.