Perhaps the most shocking moment in national political history came about last week when, after years of denials, Sen. Hillary Clinton announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.

Well, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Anyone with a brain in his or her head had more or less concluded that she would follow in her husband’s footsteps when she ran against Rick Lazio for Senate in 2000. Big decisions were made on the Democratic side last week. Not only did Clinton announce her candidacy, but so did Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the young upstart who has captivated the nation with his smooth tones and bipartisan feel. With the prior announcement of former Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, we have now assembled the top tier, the star level, of the Democratic primary process.

The party has separated the wheat from the chaff as well. The Democrats 2004 nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, also made his own official announcement last week that he would forego a second attempt at the nation’s highest office. For Kerry, this is all for the best. The man did not exactly run an inspiring campaign in 2004, basing much of his appeal to voters on the “hey, at least I’m not Bush” school of electioneering. His campaign was so poorly run that former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAullife, certainly no right-wing partisan, called it “one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics,” in his new book.

What little chance Kerry had of getting elected in 2008 probably went out the window in November, when he joked that failing to get a good education would mean a career in the military. Whatever Kerry meant to say, the incident only added to his reputation as an elitist windbag. While the nation’s pundits would have no doubt enjoyed watching Kerry and his former running mate Edwards duke it out during the debates, such a slugfest is not to be.

The bulk of the media have already decided to treat 2008 in many ways as a three-way race, with only Clinton, Obama and Edwards getting any real traction in the press. But other candidates with serious resumes do exist, even though at times it can be hard to find them. In the Senate, both Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut have experience for miles, more than any of their three Senate challengers, and are at least as credible of candidates as Kerry was. And former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who recently stepped down as chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, looks more like former President Bill Clinton than his wife ever will, a perfect fit for the mold of a moderate governor.

But right now, star power is playing a major role in the process, and Dodd, Biden and Vilsack have a lot of catching up to do. Though he is not as battle tested as one might like in a presidential candidate, Obama gives off an energy that cannot be ignored, and has filled traditional Democratic primary voters with excitement and hope for the 2008 cycle.

Edwards has a strong following among the liberal-leaning Internet activist community, and has focused much of his energy on changing the climate of reported employee mistreatment at the nation’s largest retailer Wal-Mart. The Democratic primary base trends much more liberal than in a general election, and that puts both Obama and Edwards in a good place.

Hillary Clinton does not have that same feeling of goodwill within the party’s liberal base. But she makes up for it with a fierce fundraising apparatus and an air of celebrity. Clinton consistently performs well in national polls, and has more than just star power behind her candidacy: she is a real celebrity, and she is a woman. Clinton is in it to win it, and she represents the best chance either party has ever had of electing a woman to the presidency. In the past, women have only run for the presidency in a quixotic fashion, like former Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun did in 2004. No one cared about Moseley-Braun’s candidacy, but Democrats, especially women, have been clamoring for a run by Clinton for years. This is a real chance to embrace the sisterhood on the national stage, and Clinton knows this. Expect higher turnouts during the primary season as new voters, voters who ignored primaries in the past, come out to register their opinion of Sen. Clinton and her agenda.

Sen. Clinton once famously stated that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was out to get her and her husband during his presidency. In the primary process Clinton will be forced to endure the slings and arrows of her Democratic brethren on a host of issues, but especially the war in Iraq. That celebrity status will go a long way towards pushing those concerns to the backburner. Democrats might not like some of Hillary Clinton’s positions, but all data indicates that they certainly like her.