With Biden withdrawing from the race on Sunday, the next question is what process will determine his replacement. One idea comes from Democratic activists Rosa Brooks and Ted Dintersmith. Their idea is to bring in celebrities like Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey to interview potential nominees in a “blitz” primary that would garner more attention than typical party debates, which are lucky to get 10 million viewers.
It’s tempting. Swift and Oprah are universally known. They have legions of devoted followers. And both have some previous evidence of supporting Democrats. Swift’s entry into partisan politics is more recent. After largely being apolitical throughout the early part of her career, she did endorse two candidates, both Democrats in Tennessee, in the 2018 midterm elections. She backed Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for for the House. Bredesen lost, but Cooper won. Then she endorsed Joe Biden at a late stage of the 2020 campaign. It’s been presumed that she would endorse him again in 2024.
Since dropping her apolitical stance, Swift has also backed a number of liberal causes, including abortion and the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to gender identity. In 2023, Swift was subject to all kinds of conspiracy theories and criticism over her political stances. In addition, polls showthat while some voters like celebrity endorsements, many do not. As many as 25 percent of voters surveyed said they would disapprove of a Swift endorsement in the presidential election.
Oprah’s political history is longer and more complex. She avoided politics completely in the first few decades of her show. She did, however, host Donald Trump on a 1988 show in which he speculated about running for president. Trump was not yet a political figure, and went on the show as a businessman and author of a best-selling memoir, 1987′s “The Art of the Deal.”
In the interview, Trump said things that one could imagine him still saying today, including that he was “tired of seeing what’s happening with this country — how we’re really making other people live like kings, and we’re not.” As Trump was not a candidate at the time, the interview did not technically violate her no-politics stance.
It would be 12 more years before Oprah would have an actual candidate for president on her show. With a close 2000 race taking place between Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas, she invited both candidates to appear on her show. Gore went first and saw a significant bump in the polls shortly afterward. A Newsweek poll showed Gore pulling away with a 12-point lead.
Bush followed eight days later. Bush charmed Oprah, kissing her on the cheek and revealing that “Wake Up, Little Susie” was his favorite song. As with Gore, Bush’s appearance was also a success, and he closed back to within two points of Gore after the interview. The political world took notice. Salon’s Joyce Millman even wrote that “The road to the White House goes through Oprah.”
Although the Bush-Gore interviews had significant political impact, Oprah still maintained her longstanding neutrality regarding candidates. That neutrality went away with the appearance of Barack Obama on the national stage. Then-Senator Obama first appeared on her show in 2006, before he was a presidential candidate. In 2008, Oprah endorsed a candidate for the first time, backing Obama for president and explaining that it “came from such a pure instinctive place.”
With her neutrality gone, Oprah became more open about her political leanings, and more vulnerable to criticism for them. In 2016, Oprah endorsed Hillary Clinton over Trump, even though by that time she had been friendly with Trump for almost 30 years. Trump, who had even talked about running for president with Oprah as his running mate, was miffed, complaining that, “Sadly, once I announced for president, she never spoke to me again.”
In 2020, Oprah celebrated Biden’s victory over her old friend Trump with a tweet: “Character rises. Decency rises. The Soul of America gets a reset. And it starts now: #BidenHarris.” When Oprah endorsed Democrat John Fetterman for Senate in 2022, the conservative Washington Examiner wrote that “It would only be a news story if Winfrey did not endorse a Democrat, not the other way around.”
As the Oprah story shows, cultural figures can help influence politics, but it can come at a cost. When bringing together politics and entertainment, both the celebrities and the Democrats should beware. There is a long history of celebrity involvement in presidential campaigns and it does not always end well. Democrats had to disavow Harvey Weinstein when his sexual offenses became known, and Rob Lowe caused a scandal with a sex tape at the 1988 Democratic Convention. And companies that have gotten involved in political disputes, including Budweiser and Target, have painfully learned Michael Jordan’s famous lesson, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”
Early in their careers, Oprah and Swift worked hard to become beloved figures who have mostly transcended politics, but their subsequent endorsements marred their reputations for neutrality. It’s true that the Democrats need a process to replace Biden, but it’s not clear that having celebrities involved will benefit the celebrities — or the Democrats.
Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including the forthcoming “The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry.”
Source link : https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/23/opinion/biden-harris-taylor-swift-oprah-endorsement/
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Publish date : 2024-07-23 04:12:19
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