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Oprah's Obama Endorsement

By pharrell

Ideally, endorsements do two things. First, they get a political candidate a bit of media attention, and perhaps some credibility with reporters. Second, though endorsements by themselves rarely convince voters to support a candidate (few Americans cast their vote for a candidate just because someone else tells them to), an effective endorsement can get voters to take a look a candidate and give the candidate himself an opportunity to make his pitch for their vote.

Oprah's endorsement of Obama certainly accomplished the first of these. Whether it is also achieving the second we won't know for a few weeks, when people actually go to the polls. She's someone people trust, which is a factor in her favor. And the way the Obama campaign used Oprah last weekend was incredibly smart--it minimized the chance that anyone would feel put off, as though Oprah was telling them who to vote for. Oprah said straight up that people should make up their own minds on primary day; she just appreciated the chance to talk about the reasons why she is supporting Barack, before eloquently explaining about those reasons. (You can watch her South Carolina speech here).

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on December 11, 2007 (boomark / email).