Ever since Oprah Winfrey's moving speech at the Golden Globe Awards last week, Centrist Democrats have been raving about the possibility that the actress and talk show host challenges Donald Trump for the Presidency in 2020. However, one of the main criticisms that has been levied against Trump is that he's simply a billionaire with absolutely no governmental experience who got elected by pretending to be Christian and being the supposed 'teller of hard truths'.
Similarly, Oprah is a billionaire who has exactly zero governmental experience, with many people not even knowing where she stands on important issues like Healthcare, Prison Reform or Tax Reform among many others. In fact, Oprah
HATES the Estate Tax and has called the Death and Estate Taxes "irritating", has voted for as many Republican politicians as she has Democratic and has been praised by conservative Bill Kristol, a man who has never met a war he didn't love. Kristol has even praised Oprah's position on regime change in Iraq in the lead up to the war, which has led to religious unrest across the Middle East, which shows that Oprah would not be the most forward thinking or progressive president, at least on these issues.
I personally want to run through Shaun King's reasons that he used to try and make the case for Oprah2020 and show you how disingenuous these four points are and why there are much, much better candidates to defeat Trump in 2020.
- An enormous social media following across all platforms.
Personally, I see this as the worst reason to endorse Oprah, terrible even. Even using Oprah's Twitter followers, which stands at a gigantic 41.4M, there are sixteen accounts of Americans with larger Twitter followers than Oprah and even excluding the 44th President, Barack Obama and 45th President, Donald Trump, which now leaves fourteen accounts with larger followings. Then excluding the people who wouldn't turn thirty-five by 2020 and news organisations, leaves us with eight people. Using Shaun King's logic, wouldn't Katy Perry, Ellen Degeneres, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Lopez or Bill Gates be a much better choice as the Democratic Candidate in 2020? You can find the list of the fifty most followed accounts
here.
- An established, core base of support that already exists. They need to be able to pack a stadium without Beyoncé or Bruce Springsteen opening up.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, as I know that Bernie Sanders has previously had celebrities such as Seth MacFarlane deliver an opening speech, but compared to other candidates such as Hillary Clinton, who had the likes of Lebron James and Beyonce take center stage in order to attract rally goers, Bernie has consistently filled out stadiums and literally had something called "overflow crowds". This Wikipedia excerpt explains it perfectly:
Beginning in June, crowds at Sanders's events became much larger than those of any other presidential candidate who had announced up to that point. At a June 20 appearance in Denver, Sanders drew an estimated 5,000 supporters at a routine campaign stop, equaling the size of the crowd at Hillary Clinton's campaign launch speech in New York City the previous weekend.
Yes, this is my laptop background image. I'm a sad BernieBro, that I know.
- The ability to present a strong contrast in character and personality to Trump.
My inner BernieBro compels me to state that Bernie Sanders is almost an exact opposite to Trump on every single major issue. Trump began his campaign with populist rhetoric, even mirroring Bernie on issues such as Foreign Policy and Healthcare but has now transformed into your typical establishment Republican. In fact, there are several candidates who are the polar opposite of Donald Trump. Kirsten Gillibrand, Nina Turner, Tulsi Gabbard, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, Pramila Jayapal and Raul Grijalva to name a few, so why only focus on Oprah who is clearly in opposition to some of the most basic center-left policies such as the Estate Tax?
- A history of organising people, because the Democratic Party is a mess.
While it's true that the Democratic Party is indeed a huge mess, how is Oprah Winfrey the answer? Like we mentioned earlier, one of the main criticisms that has been made against Trump is that he has no governmental experience and was just propped up by right-wing mega-donors, this is something that Democrats have been constantly shouting about, that we need more established younger Democrats to take over from Trump in 2020. Oprah has no governmental experience and would be propped up by Democratic mega-donors, - I'm looking at you Stephen Cloobeck - Shaun King has previously labelled Donald Trump as a "reality TV star", which is extremely hypocritical considering that Oprah would just be
exactly the same but better on social issues.
You can find Shaun's article
here, but allow me to put it this way, if Donald Trump having no experience and being a simple TV show host should disqualify him from office, why in the world would you want to do something similar in the case of Oprah Winfrey? Just because she happens to be more liberal on some issues?
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