Oprah, unlike many other billionaires, seems to have some genuine empathy toward marginalized groups, especially minorities and women.
If she assembles a real economic team, a would be more welcoming of her in the primary than say a Mark Cuban or a Zuckerberg.
I think liberals and leftist need to no just disqualify candidates from the jump. Think back to 2000; we had a joke of a primary which was a cake walk from Al Gore, way worse than what Hillary got in 2016. As a result, Gore's pitches were not tested, he didn't have to flank to the left, and he showed up to the general pedaling some weak brand populism.
In 2004 and 2008 we had more open primaries which allowed more ideas to get attention and new pitches. Jon Edwards nor Howard Dean won the nomination, but their focus on inequity laid the groundwork for how Dems started to change the way they talk about the economy. In 2008 it got nasty but Hillary v. Obama v. Dean forced the Dems more left, and Obama was able to beat back Hillary by speaking against the 'Bill Clintonism" of the past, namely vague appeals to white nationalism. It also caused the Dems to move away from the "pro-growth" economics rhetoric.
2020 every centrist will have to find one or two leftist issue to run on, establishment Democrats will have to move left to cover their flanks, and leftist will need to spell out plainly how civil right policy fights into their plans.
The establishment will not rally around one candidate, Bernie nor Elizabeth Warren will not have a monopoly over the progressive vote or the "white working class" vote, which will force them to try to expand their coalition. We will have the orgy of serious policy debate people like Krugman and Klein want, and the Democratic Party through forced to address the issues affecting their entire coalition.
One of the big changes, that everyone on the left should do going into 2018, 2020 and beyond, is to reassess what and who are the working class in America today. Increasingly, the working class should be thought of as low paid service employees of all ethnic backgrounds.
I think that older, white guys who work in factories and in construction should be thought of as a demographic that would be nice to win, retain or win back but they are not essential. Furthermore, that group may be largely unreachable. I mean, if you talk to unionized factory guys and "skilled tradesmen," you see a lot of reactions who are both racist and possessed by relative status anxiety. they are more concerned about workers, lower on the economic hierarchy, doing better rather than take back the ill gotten gains of the investor and managerial class.
As a corollary, the center left should care less about winning over white, wealthy, college educated, suburbanites who usually vote Republican. Just as the older, white working class is a bulwark of conservatism, the suburban petite bourgeoisie and managerial class is the backbone of reactionary politics. Those two groups have a certain amount of relative social status. What we must do is to appeal to voters who have nothing to lose.
We need to target and organize: waiter staff, hotel staff, warehouse workers, retail workers, people caught in a series of temp jobs, low paid graduate students, anyone who drives for uber or lyft or who works for any of those horrible on demand labor apps any one who is paying two thirds or more of their income on housing and we nee to make it clear that things are fundamentally wrong and that the needs of this new working class come first. The low wage and precarious worker, comes first over the feelings of the professional class, the employers, the investor class, the university administrator, the land lords and the big city real estate developers.
Combine this new working class voting bloc with our existing base (which shares some overlap with the new working class) and we can win all over the map and we can shut out old economy Steves and the trust fund Beckies. The Rustbelt strategy is over, the "Panera bread" strategy is over. Embrace the new working class and their struggles and we will stop struggling so damn much at the polls.
