Oprah: Does her Obama endorsement matter?

last updated 8 January 2015

When Oprah Winfrey talks, said Martha Moore in USA Today, millions listen. All she has to do is recommend Tolstoy, and Anna Karenina becomes an instant best-seller. She dubs a simple “mail-order canvas bag” one of her favorite things, and tens of thousands of her fans are soon toting around one of their own. Now, by backing Barack Obama for president, Oprah is testing “the limits of what a personal endorsement can—or can’t—do.” The wildly popular talk-show host has already hosted an Obama fund-raiser that hauled in $3 million; this weekend, she’ll be stumping with him in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But will her star quality make a difference? It’s hard to say. Only 8 percent of respondents to a USA Today/Gallup poll said that an Oprah endorsement would make them more likely to vote for Obama, and more than 60 percent said that celebrity endorsements had no real influence.

Oprah, though, may be the exception to that rule, said Katharine Seelye in The New York Times. Admired and even revered by her 8.6 million daily viewers, she’s a “pastoral figure” whose soothing message—“Transform your life! Be positive! Be true to yourself!”—has become a kind of working-class gospel. And if ever a celebrity were perfectly matched to a candidate, it’s Oprah to Obama. She “personifies the new post-Bush, post-partisan, post-boomer politics that Obama is preaching,” said Dan Gerstein in The Wall Street Journal. Unlike Barbra Streisand—who, of course, has endorsed Hillary—Oprah isn’t perceived as another smug Hollywood liberal. She takes on serious issues in a serious way, with a real commitment of her time and money; she’s seen as genuine and apolitical, and appeals to Americans “across every demographic,” black and white, rich and poor.

That’s all very nice, said Stanley Crouch in the New York Daily News. It’s also very inconsequential. Oprah may have the Midas touch with books and bags, but the presidency is something else entirely. Political endorsements, no matter how gilt-edged, usually don’t compel voters to change their minds, and most Democrats already see Clinton as their battle-tested champion. Remember: Oprah “is not running. Obama is.” True enough, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. But Obama has now surged into the lead in polls of Iowa voters, and if that crucial, Jan. 3 caucus is decided by just a few percentage points, Oprah just might be a factor. “If I were running for president, I’d rather have her with me than against me.”