Mainstream media reports have suggested that Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), or Senator Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.), are possible presidential candidates for 2020.
Yet another possibility is Representative Maxine Waters, the elderly Democrat from California who has been ranting and raving against Donald Trump for some time, and who recently suggested that leftists harass and threaten Trump officials and Trump supporters in public.
Yet Waters, a commentator for CNN recently suggested, might well be the Democrats’ next nominee, and not just because, as Elle reported, her visage adorns a new line of clothing.
Waters Gets The Beat Of The Resistance
Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News, John Phillips explained why Waters might be presidential timber: “Mad Max is the only one dancing to the beat of the ‘Resistance,’ and her album is about to go platinum.”
Phillips used the analogy of pop stars Prince and Michael Jackson. Prince “thought that Jacko’s lyrics were low-brow,” while Jackson was “less concerned with the lyrics, and more concerned with the beat. He felt that if people got into the beat of a song, the lyrics were almost irrelevant.”
Jackson was right. He sold 750 millions albums, Phillips wrote, compared to 100 million for Prince. “The same rules apply to the world of politics.”
The GOP primaries in 2016, Phillips wrote, are an example of the phenomenon. Try as they might, the candidates facing Donald Trump fell away one by one, although they “said and did the right things, and even dressed the part.”
However, only one candidate understood the “beat” of the electorate: Donald Trump.
Pundits were quick to call him a reality show buffoon, and write him off as a shameless self-promoter who had exactly zero chance at winning the election.
Well, that turned out to be fake news.
It didn’t matter that then-candidate Trump was using salty language, or challenging Republican orthodoxies in any number of ways — he understood the mood and frustrations of the electorate better than anyone in the race.
He didn’t need to back the Brinks truck to the loading dock outside the offices of overpaid consultants, to know that the American people were furious over illegal immigration and believed the U.S. was getting screwed in our trade deals with other countries. He just knew it.
Phillips believes Waters, like Trump, gets it: “On the Democratic side of the aisle, I challenge you to find a politician or media personality who has better expressed the anger, frustration and rage of the ‘Resistance’ better than Maxine Waters.”
Not Vice President Joe Biden, he wrote, not Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and not Hillary Clinton.
Waters, he wrote, is the “biggest rock star with liberals right now,” and because “she gets their beat, they don’t care if her lyrics are profane or off key.”
What Waters Said
Phillips’ point? Waters was unflinching, unafraid to say what the Left wanted to hear:
Already you have members of your cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants. We have protesters taking up at their house who are saying, “No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep.”
And guess what? We’re gonna win this battle. Because while you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don’t know the Bible. God is on our side. On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable. On the side of understanding that if we can’t protect the children, we can’t protect anybody.
And so let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!
Some members of Waters’ own party, most notably Representative Nancy Pelosi, denounced her. But some didn’t, and the grassroots left loved it, Phillips wrote.
That is why she might just be the next presidential nominee. As President Trump said of Democrats at a rally for Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina, “They are the party of Maxine Waters.”
Face On Shirts
One small indicator that the cultural left is listening to Waters is a line of clothing from Willy Chavarria, a Mexican-American designer, who put Waters’ angry countenance on shirts.
“Chavarria paid tribute to the congresswoman by emblazoning a portrait of her on a sleeveless black shirt with the words ‘Fighter’ written above,” Elle reported.
“Speaking to WWD, Chavarria said he saluted the fearless leader because she ‘inspires me not to take s–t from people.’ Same, Willy.”
Photo: AP Images
