Will Oprah Winfrey be able to give president Donald Trump a competitive run for the presidency during the elections of 2020?
I think she will be able to and here are some of the reasons why:
1.) Oprah Winfrey, just like president Trump has a broad and deep public awareness and profile about who they are (there names are well known) and also what they stand for.
Any presidential hopeful will have to cultivate this profile if they don't have it to begin with, or at least a much lower public notoriety than president Trump. Any presidential hopeful usually spends a lot of campaign money to get their name 'out there' and then even more money to let the public know what they stand for. Hillary Clinton, president Trump and Oprah Winfrey do not have this problem.
2.) Tying in with the above is their particular brand and their brand name: both the brand names of Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump are tied to their personal names and then also tied-in with who they are and what they stand for. If you ask someone if they know 'Oprah', or 'Trump' around the world, they will know exactly who you are talking about and what they are all about. This is priceless in a presidential campaign. Oprah might even be ahead in this regard since her show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show", aired for years all over the world and showed exactly what Oprah is all about - aspects of her life, which does not only include finance, property and business, but more spiritual, community and other aspects that many voters can relate to and that might sit well with them. They might not know the world of Donald Trump as a successful business billionaire, but they certainly will feel they know the world of Oprah Winfrey through the popular subject matter of her show. Many things that can personify and humanize Trump are not really known about him even to this day; this might incidentally be an aspect he might concentrate on more in the 2020 campaign: Trump for instance as the family man, perhaps Trump's spirituality, or Trump's deeper awareness and perhaps care for the micro community and not only America on a macro level.
In today's world saturated awareness of your name and what you stand for is important and not many can lay claim to this other than Oprah.
3.) Oprah will have the support of the liberal media in the U.S. and all over the world. She is black and she is a woman. She will in all likelihood have the support from most of the liberal leaders of Western Europe, also.
4.) The idea of a (read: another) black president will not sound so improbable, nor undesirable to millions of voters: there had been a black president before, so there is a set historical reality and why not (in the minds of voters) have another black president and a female president to boot? A female president might also be desirable and even an idea who's time has come since it was denied to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential elections.
5.) It must be remembered that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote even if she did not win the electoral college vote. If Oprah takes these Democratic party and liberal voters wholesale over from Hillary from 2016 and also get the additional votes she needs to win the electoral colleges by winning the votes of Republican and conservative white and black female voters; voters that have watched her show in their living rooms for years, she might find success. It might be easy over estimate the influence of these voters (or perhaps not), but remember Oprah might technically already have the votes that Hillary had anyway and put all this together it might be enough.
6.) Both Oprah and Trump are moguls: president Trump with property development, golf course development and the business themed reality show "The Apprentice" and Oprah a media mogul, with the already mentioned successful show "The Oprah Winfrey Show", "Oprah: Where are they now" and her magazine "O. The Oprah magazine"and many other media related projects. This behind Oprah on the campaign trail will surely be a great advantage to her. President Trump took his business negotiation skills and his life from "The apprentice" with him on the campaign trail (and probably a few other experiences and know-how), but Oprah among other things will be able to take her media empire on the campaign trail with her. What an enormous advantage!
7.) Lastly, just as a point of similarity, both Oprah and Trump are billionaires. It is probable that a candidate of Oprah's politically correct frame (black, liberal, woman with a background of abuse, connection to communities- or at least the thousands of woman of those communities that have been on her show and watched her show) will not lack for campaign finance. She could, however, finance her own campaign, just like she can mobilize her own media campaign through her own media company.
It will be interesting to see how everything plays out if Oprah does decide to take on Trump: a clash of Titans.
Written and published on Steemit and Blogger by Omar Daniel Fourie on 26 August 2018.