Who better to bring home the meaning of E Pluribus Unum than Oprah?
The one-name wonder is her own economic force, a woman who can move company stock prices simply by placing car keys under chairs or mentioning a book title or creating a Christmas list.
At the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, back in her hometown of Chicago, Oprah tried to move the American public toward unity in democracy. She spoke about the people who seek to rule, “who seek to divide and then conquer.”
In her only-Oprah-can-do-it way, she made the Constitution relatable and real again.
Her advice to us wasn’t the pablum we hear about rugged individualism and raising yourself up by your bootstraps. She told us that we are neighbors — and we don’t ask if our neighbors have citizenship or if they married the way we think they should be or if they are “childless cat ladies.” When the house is on fire, we go ahead and rescue the cat, too.
Oprah quoted the late, great Congressman John Lewis — “no matter what ship our ancestors arrived on, we are all in the same boat now.” And she hammered that point home by connecting our power to vote our values, that “democracy and respect are the ballot.”
Democrats, Never Trumpers and experts on authoritarianism have tried for the entire Trump era to warn the American people that the entire American experiment is at stake. While polls show Americans are broadly worried about threats to our democracy, democracy as an issue barely appears on lists of voter priorities this election.
This is what made Oprah’s surprise DNC appearance so valuable: She has claimed her pride in being American, and in her only-Oprah-can-do-it way, she made the Constitution relatable and real again. Her storytelling, charisma and sense of optimism are her superpowers in her role of healer-in-chief. Her message is simple: The choice in November is to choose loyalty to the Constitution, rather than loyalty to any individual. There is no going back to a time of division and darkness — it is time to choose joy.