In 2016, 63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump for president of the United States. His opponent received more votes, but POTUS is not elected by popular vote. The Electoral College is an anachronism, but its provisions are clear. It allows for a candidate with fewer popular votes to be elected.
With possible exception of John Quincy Adams, Hillary Clinton’s credentials for the presidency were probably stronger than anyone who ever contended for the job. In stark contrast, Trump could well be the least prepared candidate ever. Electing Donald Trump to the White House was the equivalent of signing Danny DeVito to be starting center for the LA Lakers.
After his unexpected victory, I did not have high expectations for Trump. This was the only man in history who had written more books than he had read. I did, however, hope and believe he might rise to the occasion. What an opportunity! I thought he would at least try to understand and master the job. Having won ultimate kudos to feed his super-sensitive ego, you’d think he would have accepted the honor with grace and actually try to do right by the job. No such luck.
I understand Donald Trump’s base. All they see is a guy who regularly pokes his finger in the eye of those smug elites whom they hate and that is all they need. He sees their support as all he has and that that was good enough in 2016. All polls show an inverse relationship between the educational level of voters and their support for Donald Trump. In other words, the less people know, the more they like him. Wonderful.
Trump [barely] won. To do so, he needed more than just his core base. He attracted some voters sympathetic to his politics but repelled by his persona. Still others who saw him as the proverbial lesser of two evils. These non-core voters are not a lock for Trump this year. Given his demonstrable inability to govern, his insensitivity to people, his shameful bullying, his 20,000+ documented lies, his non-sequiturian logic, his addiction to false equivalencies, and his unending inanities, many 2016 Trump voters will not support him in 2020. (Also, one talking head on TV morbidly pointed out that about a million of the them have died.)
In 2016, Trump beat the only candidate he could have beat. (If Clinton had won, one could have said the same thing.) Now he may be in the same position again. To his advanatge, Trump is now the incumbent and Joe Biden is not a strong candidate. Biden is showing his age, prone to misstatements and is generally not very charismatic. Nevertheless, the polls have him well positioned to beat Trump.
Because of his age, a successful Biden would likely to be a one-term President; maybe not even that. Therefore, while the vice-presidential choice is usually not that critical, this year it is.
When the nomination was wrapped up, Biden pledged to select a woman for as his running mate. This was probably a good idea at the time. The list of possibilities was well under a dozen. Most, predominant among them were Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar. Warren is just too far left to help Biden, is from a sure-win Blue state and would be raw meat for a Trump campaign. Harris has decent credentials but hasn’t proven to be much of a vote-getter outside of California. And Biden could take California with Woody Woodpecker as his running mate. With an impressive resume, neutral positions and coming from an in-play state, Amy Klobuchar seemed the likely choice.
Then came the horrific murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Clovid-19 notwithstanding, suddenly racial politics rose to the fore. Aggressive prosecutors became an issue and Klobuchar’s had a controversial history as such, and not just anywhere, but in Minneapolis. Furthermore, a Black woman for veep became almost a political necessity for Biden. In an instant, Klobuchar’s star fell from the top the tree.
This leaves Kamala Harris as the likely choice. But she too was a prosecutor and portrayed herself as tough on crime. There are cases will come back to haunt her. Also, there is the not-too-secret ambition of Governor Gavin Newsom to be the 2024 Democratic candidate for the White House. A sitting vice-president from California would complicate his path. Could or would Newsom undermine a Harris appointment? Maybe.
So, what should Biden do?
He has one very good, or at least very politic choice: OPRAH WINFREY. Maybe not an ideal candidate – no one is — but in the arena with the likes Trump and Biden, she looks very good.
Oprah Winfrey is 66, has little political baggage, unparalleled name recognition, superior speaking skills and politically owes no one anything. She seems to have reasonable political leanings and she has a resume that is as impressive as anyone on the planet. Her celebrity is based in show biz but much more on biz part than the show part. She is a woman of real substance who has built and runs an real empire. This is not just some Hollywood know-nothing celebrity with little more to offer than an uninformed opinion expressed through some flashy orthodontia.
As a businessperson, she makes Donald Trump look like a guy on the corner with an apple cart. From poverty in the Jim Crow south, she rose to ultimately own and head OWN, her own television network. The same source shows her net worth as $2.6 billion; Donald Trump’s at $2.1 billion. In total contrast to Winfrey, the New York Times estimated the Trump built his empire with [an inflation-adjusted] $400+ million from Daddy. From this, he fitfully built a less-than-impressive empire with less-than-impressive skill.
If I could pick anyone to be the US president, it would not be Oprah Winfrey. However, with all the flawed human beings out there who would have a serious shot at the White House, Orpah Winfrey would be make my list. If she’d take the pay cut, she ought to be on the top of Joe Biden’s list.