As much as I worry about Citizens United, I think voters being shameless and idiotic is an even worse problem. If we normalize electing celebrities as presidents, then we’re going to end up like all the third world democracies where you win by having name recognition from playing soccer or acting in action movies.
Of course I know it. I would like Democrats to know it as well, since that’s very much a winning issue.
Anyone else struggling with trig’s deep cut there can skip straight to https://www.barrysanders.com/blogs/news/12488893-act-like-youve-been-there instead of googling for that like I did.
Sports. Weird stuff. :P
And to be clear, I’m hoping she doesn’t run. I really am.
But if she does and shows promise and starts winning primaries, that’s a train I can be persuaded to hop aboard.
I’d vote for Oprah over Trump in a heartbeat. I’d vote for a mustard stain over Trump in a heartbeat. But I sure as fuck hope we can do better.
I completely agree with this in spirit but the Republicans have to be punished politically for their policies, full stop, else we’ll be trapped forever in a world of semi-responsible Democratic politicians and Republicans running on burn-it-all-down policy positions that elect only the most demagoguer-ish and completely unqualified. Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate has a point about being the party of purity when Republicans run on an essentially asymmetric political landscape (even if her worry was more specific to Franken et al, and probably a bit misplaced in that respect).
Thoroughly crushing Republicans the next cycle as much as possible will not only be good policy for America but also actually help cure the Republicans of the gerrymandered policy traps and threadbare majorities they’ve dug themselves into. To that end, Oprah looms like the Ultimate Solution here, and personally i’m glad to have that option.
BTW, here’s really why she shouldn’t run, and why I think she’d lose: debates.
For starters, Oprah’s entire career has been built on making her guests feel comfortable, and making people feel at ease, and trying to find common ground and commonality. That probably plays poorly in the debates against other Democrats who will be holding policy views similar to hers. I’m not sure the spirit of confrontation required to run for president, the willingness to say things that will piss people off no matter what, is a club in her bag.
Her other issue with debates, especially if she should ever have to debate DJT, is that he doesn’t care about facts, policies, and truths, and she does. It is easy to envision her being taken completely out of her range and off guard by trying to play the part of a willing-to-learn but amateur politician, while the President simply does his Pepe The Frog idiocy on stage.
Maybe…? Angry Oprah (which i’m sure she could / can do) would be a galvanizing moment. The thing about Oprah is that she speaks what women are thinking. Letting Oprah just open up on Trump after he tries to weasel out of something he said would be some cause some kind of paroxysm of catharsis nationally. And, after all, even though she was no Jerry Springer i think we forget that at first it wasn’t clear that Oprah was suis generis and Sally Jessie Rafael and Riki Lake were the lampreys riding on her coattails; she was a talk show host like they were, and surely could whip out some rightous indignation at the right time. If anything she’d probably be the best candidate to debate Trump since guys like Trump - foot-in-mouth, lack of self-awareness, logical fallacies left and right - are the bread and butter of the domestic drama of talk shows.
I think she’d be fine in debates. They highlight charisma and presence, and she has more of either than any politician in the country. You only need an inch of policy depth to get through. The networks repeat and emphasize moments of drama, one-liners and gaffes, not your 90-second answer on regressive tax rates.
Having grown up in a small town in the Midwest, I know exactly why he is charismatic to a lot of people.
True, and I considered that while writing that line. But Nixon’s being a scumbucket wasn’t really a Republican failing. The voters punished the GOP for associating with him, but it’s not like the Republican party platform was “burgle the DNC headquarters”.
A better retort might have been “Hey, GWB wrecked the global economy by following the GOP playbook, yet the US populace handed the House to them just two years later!” And that would be true.
But I really do think that Trump and the racist wing of the Tea Party (which may or may not be the entire Tea Party) have driven the youth of the nation away from the Conservative party in unprecedented numbers. Attitudes about minorities, LGBT, drugs, income inequality, the environment and incarceration – all made incarnate in Trump – have made the GOP unpalatable to the 24-and-younger crowd.
And let’s face it – the nomination/confirmation of Gorsuch may indeed be his longest-lasting accomplishment. I don’t imagine that a future Democrat president will waste much time erasing Trump’s executive orders, and a Dem House + Senate will probably put back most of the Obama-era regulations. We’ll be back in the Paris Accords and probably re-inserted into something like TPP and NAFTA in the first year of President [BLANK] (D).
Likely we will shortly view Trump’s presidency as an interregnum in US history – a strange gap of weirdness where we figured out which direction we wanted to go. Like the Civil War, or that summer where everyone pretended to like Ska music.
BUT, Gorsuch will remain and champion Conservative causes for many, MANY years. And more to the point, he will almost certainly have a bigger and more lasting impact on US policy than Trump will (barring a war with NK).
Going through security at the Phoenix airport and a TSA agent complimented the t-shirt of the girl behind me in line, saying he agreed. It read “Oprah-Obama 2020”.
Hey man, PRETENDED?
I mean, I didn’t literally take part in the zoot suit riots, but who doesn’t like a band that outnumbers the audience? Third wave ska was just a natural outgrowth of the Bush years’ racial clashing and economic uncertainty, then tempered by the Clinton years’ peace and prosperity, as America gently coasted toward Y2K. Freshfaced, dough-faced boys brashly brandished brass instruments and staked out American hegemony in all fields. Their influences were their friends. The Meters? Sure, we play in a meter! Gents wearing chains on their wallets and ladies wearing small backpacks skanked out their exuberance over club floors sticky with sweat and beer. They didn’t know America would be thrust into years and years of war, or the housing markets or the .coms would crash, or their minitowers could fit in their pockets. They just didn’t want to be sellouts, God bless 'em.
The collapse of ska was the greatest historical disaster of the 20th century.
LOL, this tangent is comedy gold.
Now I want someone to whip up a Ken-Burns-style photo montage of that ska music scene with a “letter to home” narration.
Wow. I thought I had musical tunnel vision.
Music peaked in the 1970s.
Incorrect it was when grunge killed metal.
The death of ska was #2.
The rise of nu-metal isn’t in this list because it’s actually the greatest disaster full-stop.
I find it really weird when I agree with @triggercut on here because he is a gigantic wang after all (and I’m very impressed that he can type so quickly despite not having hands and only balls and pubes), but we’re really in an era when Democrats need to be able to learn from and use the tactics of the right, because those are winning tactics. If that means throwing out the policy baby with the ineffective tactics bathwater. . . ??? I really dunno, man.
Taking back the court and undoing anything and everything Trump has done are paramount. I’m . . . not terribly opposed to virtually any path Democrats need to take in order to do so.
Which yes, is exactly the sort of thing a Trump supporter would say.
edit: None of which changes the fact that in an ideal world, I think there are monumentally better candidates than Oprah hiding somewhere out there in various respects, but if the American electorate can only respond to facile celebrity demagoguery, then so be it.
I’m not sure why we wouldn’t just end up in an endless ping-ponging cycle in which each new President’s political capital depends in large part on their undoing the actions of their predecessor. Unless you propose many years of single-party rule, which seems to me neither likely nor desirable.
I fail to see how a few decades of absolute, unquestionable Democratic rule is undesirable, except insofar as it delays the coming tide of Glorious Armandism a little longer.
I would expect no less a response from you, sir!