National Post (National Edition)
If not Oprah, then who will Democrats pick?
DO THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO WIN THE WHITE HOUSE OR A TWITTER DEBATE?
TRUMP HASN’T DEFINITIVELY PROVEN THAT OUTSIDERS MAKE BAD PRESIDENTS.
You don’t hear as much these days about the prospect of Oprah Winfrey running for U.S. president. Some part of that no doubt results from the fact she keeps insisting she has no plan, no desire and no intention of seeking the job.
“I don’t want to run. I am not trying to test any waters, don’t want to go in those waters,” she said in November at a campaign rally for a Democratic candidate in the mid-terms.
“It would kill me,” she told a British magazine in July. “All the non-truths, the bullsh-t, the crap, the nastiness, the backhanded backroom stuff that goes on … I would not be able to do it. It’s not a clean business.”
Her dismissals contribute to what many find attractive: should she declare, she would immediately place at the top of potential nominees. How many other billionaire celebrities, the prospect of an easy run to even greater fame and renown there for the taking, would have the character to say no, just because they don’t think it’s a good idea?
The odd thing is that she might actually make a decent politician. Her background leaves Donald Trump’s in ashes. She made her own money — much more of it than him, it seems certain — from a much tougher start at much longer odds, entirely on her own drive, talent and skill. She has a real understanding of, and connection to, the American heartland that comes from decades of listening to their stories and earning their respect. Where he is shallow, unread and disinterested, she has an extensive understanding of ordinary Americans’ concerns and hopes. She’s spent 30 years in the public eye without seriously tarnishing a reputation for integrity; his history is a squalid tale of bunnies, strippers, bankruptcies and payoffs.
There’s an argument that suggests a second celebrity president would be a disaster, finalizing the descent of the office to cheap theatre and pampered hair. It’s a good argument but not bulletproof: Trump hasn’t definitively proven that outsiders make bad presidents. It may just be that he’s the wrong outsider. A more mature, stable, capable person might indeed have drained the swamp, rather than splashing around in it until even the swamp creatures yearn for relief.
In the absence of Oprah, the Democrats are falling back on the old reliables: governors, senators, high-profile personalities with more traditional political backgrounds. The first nomination debate is scheduled for June, and may have to be held over two evenings to accommodate all the wannabes. Listings of potential candidates run anywhere from 15 to 20 or more. The New York Times, which wants another crack at Trump the way a six-year-old wants another Christmas, reported on the weekend that several of the better-known names will soon put their campaigns in high gear in a pre-emptive effort to fend off the competition. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren did just that Monday when she formally launched her bid.
Warren, along with fellow senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are fine examples of the conundrum Democrats face thanks to the convolutions the party creates for itself via its intense focus on identity politics. A Massachusetts left-winger whose claim to distant Cherokee ancestry rendered her an online laughingstock, a black male and a California female of Tamil-jamaican background tick off numerous boxes on the gender-ethnicity test so crucial to “progressive” credibility. But they also highlight acute fault lines dividing the party along factors of age, gender, ethnicity and background.
The two people most often cited as top-ranked threats to Trump are former vice-president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. They boast decades of experience, name recognition, established records, tested campaign teams and proven skill at raising the huge sums needed to compete. But they suffer the greatest of progressive sins: both are male and white, and both are veteran members of an era of government a lot of people would like to forget. Sanders is 77, Biden 76.
Biden is the establishment, a key figure in two decades during which the party aligned its values with whatever suited Bill and Hillary Clinton. He’s failed at two previous bids and stood aside to let Hillary run in 2016, when he might have been a better candidate. He certainly couldn’t have run a more bumbling campaign.
Sanders remains the country’s most popular senator and a hot ticket for the left, but as an independent senator from Vermont, who only joined the Democratic party to serve his ambitions, his allure beyond the bastion of eastern populism is unproven. Democrats, more than one onlooker has noted, would win every presidential race if the country consisted of California and the northeast seaboard. The problems they run into rest in that vast swath of America that lies in between, and isn’t as convulsed by debates on identity, gender, nomenclature or adverbial purity as those clamouring for wholesale change from the safety of their ideological battlements. Outside the universities, away from the urban cores and militant newsrooms, millions of people remain primarily concerned with health care, security, the quality of schools and the future prospects of their children.
That’s another puzzle “progressives” must solve for themselves. Are they about policies that may have a practical impact on voters, or are they about big intellectual debates on gender balance in boardrooms and a dozen other activist agendas? Policies are dull. Trump never had much in the way of policies — not so deeply held he wouldn’t reverse them with a predawn tweet — and he still retains enough support that a second term is not far-fetched. But without policies it all becomes about image, character and campaign skills.
Somewhere in the ranks of lesser-knowns may be a candidate with the right qualities. Michael Bloomberg has money, experience and brains, but a second white, male, billionaire New Yorker might be too much for even the most desperate Trump haters. No one outside Texas had heard of Beto O’rourke a year ago, but he nearly defeated Sen. Ted Cruz in November’s midterms and now he’s everyone’s favourite longshot — so popular that Sanders’ devotees are already doing their best to crush him.
A competent Democrat would have defeated Trump in 2016. Oprah with a taste for blood. Whether they can find him or her for the 2020 rematch is no sure thing.