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 Winfrey running, it would also punctuate how Trump’s candidacy has altered political norms. “At the same time, politics is ridiculous right now.”
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.
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 Winfrey might be just what the Democrats need.
The White House even waded in, saying Trump would “welcome the challenge, whether it be Oprah Winfrey or anybody else”, when a spokesman was grilled aboard Air Force One.
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.
‘It’s up to the people’
A representative for Winfrey did not reply to a request on Monday for comment. But 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.”
But fevered speculation only escalated. “Oprah for president? She’s got my vote,” tweeted pop superstar Lady Gaga.
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.
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. “I like Oprah,” 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.”
