{"id":144690,"date":"2018-01-09T00:21:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T05:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=144690"},"modified":"2018-01-09T00:21:18","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T05:21:18","slug":"oprah-speech-has-democrats-buzzing-about-possible-2020-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/09\/oprah-speech-has-democrats-buzzing-about-possible-2020-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Oprah speech has Democrats buzzing about possible 2020 run"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Oprah Winfrey (Photo: Oprah Winfrey\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DES MOINES, Iowa \u2014 Oprah Winfrey’s impassioned call for \u201ca brighter morning even in our darkest nights\u201d at the Golden Globes has Democratic Party activists buzzing about the media superstar and the 2020 presidential race \u2014 even if it’s only a fantasy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, it’s ridiculous \u2014 and I get that,\u201d said Brad Anderson, Barack Obama’s 2012 Iowa campaign director. While he supports the idea of Winfrey running, it would also punctuate how Trump’s candidacy has altered political norms. \u201cAt the same time, politics is ridiculous right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winfrey’s speech as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award on Sunday touched on her humble upbringing and childhood wonder in civil rights heroes.<\/p>\n

But it was her exhortation of the legions of women who have called out sexual harassers \u2014 and her dream of a day \u201cwhen nobody has to say ‘me too’ again\u201d \u2014 that got some political operatives, in early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, thinking Winfrey might be just what the Democrats need.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d said Liz Purdy, who led Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary campaign.<\/p>\n

Trump’s job approval rating sat at just 32 per cent in December, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll. And though polls show his approval up slightly since, Trump is the least popular first-year president on record. He has also been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, though he has vehemently denied the allegations.<\/p>\n

Winfrey, in September and October, publicly dismissed the notion of seeking the nation’s highest office, though she noted that Trump’s victory made her rethink the requirements of the office.<\/p>\n

A representative for Winfrey did not reply to a request Monday for comment from The Associated Press. Winfrey’s longtime partner, Stedman Graham, told the Los Angeles Times that \u201cit’s up to the people\u201d whether she will be president, adding, \u201cShe would absolutely do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 and produced feature films, and began her own network.<\/p>\n

Trump himself has lavished praise on Winfrey over the years, including in 2015, when he said that he would consider her as a running mate on his Republican ticket. \u201cI like Oprah,\u201d Trump told ABC News in June 2015. \u201cI think Oprah would be great. I’d love to have Oprah. I think we’d win easily, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

It echoed comments Trump made in 1999, when he was weighing a presidential candidacy in the Reform Party. \u201cIf she’d do it, she’d be fantastic. I mean, she’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman,\u201d Trump told CNN’s Larry King.<\/p>\n

NBC tweeted a picture of a smiling Winfrey under the message, \u201cNothing but respect for our future president. #goldenglobes.\u201d It quickly attracted attention, including Donald Trump Jr.’s. The president’s son retweeted it, calling it \u201cstrange.\u201d The network later deleted the tweet and explained that it was done by a \u201cthird party agency\u201d and was a reference to a joke by Golden Globes host Seth Meyers.<\/p>\n

Late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel said at a press conference Monday that he thought Winfrey’s speech was \u201cpreaching to the choir\u201d with her Hollywood audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, given the choice between Oprah and our current president, I’m on the bus with Oprah travelling the country encouraging people to sign up and vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some operatives think she has what it takes to be a viable presidential candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe would be a serious candidate,\u201d said Jennifer Palmieri, former White House communications director under President Barack Obama and the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.<\/p>\n

Beyond her rise from poverty, 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 Palmieri describes as an enduring resistance among some voters to women with political ambition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think lessons we all learned from watching Hillary’s run, and how her ambition was unfavourably and unfairly viewed, coupled with Oprah’s existing popularity, could give Oprah a strong start,\u201d Palmieri said.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say 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.<\/p>\n

Still, while some Democrats would embrace Winfrey’s outsider-celebrity status as the party’s answer to Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., noted that Winfrey, like Trump, lacks any kind of experience in government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the arguments for Oprah is 45,\u201d Pelosi said, referring to Trump in shorthand for the 45th president. \u201cI think one of the arguments against Oprah is 45.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DES MOINES, Iowa \u2014 Oprah Winfrey’s impassioned call for \u201ca brighter morning even in our darkest nights\u201d at the Golden …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":90976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16],"tags":[42397,1135],"class_list":["post-144690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","tag-2020-presidential-race","tag-oprah-winfrey","mauthors-thomas-beaumont-and-steve-peoples","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}