To both parties, notion of Oprah in 2020 not that strange
Pundits believe Winfrey presents interesting option for electorate
Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa — Oprah Winfrey’s impassioned call for “a brighter morning even in our darkest nights” at the Golden Globes has Democratic Party activists buzzing about the media superstar and the 2020 presidential race — even if it’s only a fantasy.
Even so, for Democrats in early voting states, and perhaps for a public that largely disapproves of President Donald Trump’s job performance, the notion of a popular media figure as a presidential candidate is not as strange as it once seemed, given the New York real estate mogul and reality TV star now in the White House.
“Look, it’s ridiculous — and I get that,” said Brad Anderson, Barack Obama’s 2012 Iowa campaign director. While he supports the idea of Ms. Winfrey running, it would also punctuate how Mr. Trump’s candidacy has altered political norms. “At the same time, politics is ridiculous right now.”
The question lingering under this surprising groundswell: Are Americans now at a point where they believe celebrity is a prerequisite for winning (let alone governing)?
“Are we really asking ourselves whether a political neophyte, billionaire, media-savvy TV star can become president? America answered that already,” said GOP consultant Ana Navarro. “I don’t know how much she knows about foreign policy or some domestic policy issues. But hell, it’s not like she’d be running against Churchill. She’d be running against Trump.”
GOP strategist Rick Wilson, a never-Trump Republican, also weighed in: “Arguably Donald Trump is the most famous man in the world.”
Under the new rules of political engagement, “maybe you can only beat a celebrity withanother celebrity.”
Back in September, John Podhoretz wrote in the New York Post that Ms. Winfrey was “America’s generous aunt” to “America’s crazy uncle.”
Ms. Winfrey’s speech as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award last Sunday touched on her humble upbringing and childhood wonderin civil rights heroes.
But it was her exhortation of the legions of women who have called out sexual harassers — and her dream of a day “when nobody has to say ‘ me too’ again” — that got some political operatives, in early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, thinking Ms. Winfrey might be just what the Democrats need.
“I think we need more role models like her that are speaking to young women and trying to restore some hope. The election of Donald Trump was a devastating setback for little girls,” said Liz Purdy, who led Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary campaign.
Mr. Trump’s job approval rating sat at just 32 percent in December, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll. And though polls show his approval increased slightly since, Mr. Trump is the least popular first-year president on record. He also has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, though he has vehemently denied the allegations.
By Monday afternoon, the White House had responded to the threat of Oprah in 2020. “We welcome the challenge,” said Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for the president, “whether it be Oprah Winfrey or anybody else.”
Her chances of winning? “One hundred percent,” said a Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speculate brazenly. “If she runs for Democratic nomination, I think it’s over.”
Ms. Winfrey, in September and October, publicly dismissed the notion of seeking the nation’s highest office, though she noted that Mr. Trump’s victory made her rethink the requirements of the office.
And she has told associates in recent months that she wants to play a part in bringing the country together, two people briefed on her thinking said.
A representative for Ms. Winfrey did not reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Ms. Winfrey’s longtime partner, Stedman Graham, told the Los Angeles Times that “it’s up to the people” whether she will be president, adding, “She would absolutely do it.”
There was no more official signal from Ms. Winfrey as to her interest in the presidency.
Several people close to her said she was keeping tabs on the news coverage and appreciated the response. Two of Ms. Winfrey’s friends said she’s “actively thinking” about 2020, CNN reported Monday morning. Democratic Party officials in Iowa are “actively putting out feelers” for Ms. Winfrey, reported the National Journal’s Hanna Trudo.
Ms. Winfrey, 64, has become a cultural phenomenon over the past 30-plus years, born into a poor home in Mississippi but breaking through as a television news and talk show personality in the 1980s.
Over 30 years, she became the face of television talk shows, starred in and produced feature films, and began her own network.
Mr. Trump himself has lavished praise on Ms. Winfrey over the years, including in 2015, when he said that he would consider her as a running mate on his Republican ticket. “I like Oprah,” Mr. Trump told ABC News in June 2015. “I think Oprah would be great. I’d love to have Oprah. I think we’d win easily, actually.”
It echoed comments Mr. Trump made in 1999, when he was weighing a presidential candidacy in the Reform Party. “If she’d do it, she’d be fantastic. I mean, she’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman,” Mr. Trump told CNN’s Larry King.
NBC tweeted a picture of a smiling Ms. Winfrey under the message, “Nothing but respect for our future president. #goldenglobes.” It quickly attracted attention, including from Donald Trump Jr. The president’s son retweeted it, calling it “strange.” The network later deleted the tweet and explained that it was done by a “third party agency” and was a reference to a joke by Golden Globes host Seth Meyers.
Late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel said at a news conference Monday that he thought Ms. Winfrey’s speech was “preaching to the choir” with her Hollywood audience.
“That said, given the choice between Oprah and our current president, I’m on the bus with Oprah traveling the country encouraging people to sign up and vote,” he said.
Some operatives think she has what it takes to be a viable presidential candidate.
“She would be a serious candidate,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former White House communications director under then-President Obama and the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Beyond her rise from poverty, Ms. Winfrey’s success as a multidimensional media figure has come from promoting ways for women to assert themselves, typically outside the political arena. That could soften what Ms. Palmieri describes as an enduring resistance among some voters to women with political ambition.
That’s not to say Ms. Winfrey can’t claim any significant political influence. She notably headlined an Iowa rally for then-Sen. Barack Obama in the weeks leading up to his surprise victory in the state’s 2008 leadoff nominating caucuses, which helped propel him to the presidential nomination.
With no obvious frontrunner for the 2020 campaign, Democrats appear likely to spend the next few years grinding through internal disagreements over policy and identity in a long contest for the nomination.
In the imagination of some Democrats, Ms. Winfrey might offer an easy way out of those problems. She inspires crucial groups for the party — women, minorities and the working class — and alienates few. She has cast herself in American culture as an avatar of optimism, not defined in ideological terms. Having made a career out of preaching the values of empowerment and inclusion, she represents in some ways a natural counterpoint to Mr. Trump’s proud pugilism.
While the draft-Oprah buzz struck some Democrats as a red-carpet-turned-Twitter boomlet that could quickly fade, few veteran strategists were ready to ignore the talk about her among rank-and-file Democrats, especially after Mr. Trump, who is less popular than Ms. Winfrey in polls, was able to mount an insurgent, reality-television-style campaign and win the White House.
David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama, said Ms. Winfrey was a figure of unique political potential, with “a boundless capacity for empathy and a preternatural ability to communicate powerfully and authentically — as we saw at the Golden Globes.”
Mr. Axelrod questioned, however, whether Ms. Winfrey would be the right fit for 2020: “Would she want to submit herself to the unforgiving,relentless and sometimes absurdprocess of running for president?”he wondered.