Entertainment, FEATURED STORIES, U.S., WORLD
Sources: Oprah Actively Considering A Presidential Bid For 2020
Twenty million people watched in baited breath on Sunday as Oprah Winfrey took to the stage at the 75th Annual Golden Globes to accept the Cecile B. DeMille lifetime achievement award; “A new day is on the horizon” — could have doubled as a campaign rallying cry.
Winfrey knew her oratory would be taken and analyzed when she shared the story of “sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother’s house in Milwaukee” in 1964 watching Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for best actor.
Explained Winfrey: “I tried many, many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats as my mom came through the door bone tired from cleaning other people’s houses.”
Winfrey then segued into the power of the #metoo moment — retelling her mother’s own experiences as indicative of the broader struggle for women’s rights. “I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because othey, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue,” Winfrey said.
The following lines will be a for shadow if Winfrey does run for president in three years’ time, her start of it all:
“I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me too’ again.”
Two of her friends, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, talked in the wake of Winfrey’s extraordinary speech, which spurred chatter about a 2020 run.
In the past, Winfrey has repeatedly expressed a reluctance-bordering-on-unwillingness to run for office. ”There will be no running for office of any kind for me,” she said on CBS’ morning show last fall. “I will never run for public office,” she said on The Hollywood Reporter podcast in the summer of 2017, however, she has also acknowledged that President Trump’s election upended assumptions about how to pursue political office.
Post acceptance, Winfrey’s longtime partner Stedman Graham was quoted saying a run is certainly a possibility. “It’s up to the people,” Graham told a Los Angeles Times reporter. “She would absolutely do it.”
Winfrey campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. During Clinton’s campaign, she discussed the prospect of a female president and said: “America, it’s about time that we made that decision.”
People are looking ahead as 129 people have already filed to run for president in 2020.