I have long been a fan of ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith. I believe he has the best sports mind in the business. But more than that, I believe he has an exceptional mind — period.
He loves talking about a host of issues, politics being one of them. He’s also made a living out of talking smack from time to time, when he believes someone has messed up or not lived up to expectations. Politics is obviously a target-rich environment.
While I’m not sure of his political leanings, I have always believed him to be a Democrat when he has waded into at least the shallow end of the political pool. And nothing at all wrong with that.
Recently, while on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” StephenA — as he is often called — ripped into the campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris. Said Smith: “Kamala Harris, who didn’t resonate during the primaries in 2020, couldn’t even get to Iowa, suddenly is the Democratic nominee, then you roll up to the convention in Chicago and everybody is like ‘She’s a rockstar!’ So it’s like ‘How’d that happen?”
Smith then added, “Yes I voted for her, a lot of people voted for her, but in the end, we end up feeling like damnfools, because we supported it, we fell for the okiedoke as they say. If you had a primary, the likelihood is she would not have been the Democratic nominee.”
To be sure, myself and a great many people I know — including some very influential Democrats — share that same belief. That said, those influential Democrats have only shared that belief with me in private. StephenA is more than happy to say it to millions of people. Repeatedly.
More than that, he is willing to state that President Donald Trump was more in-tune with the American voter — including the Black community — than Harris or the Democrats. Quite relevantly, he says that as one who came out of “real America.” Meaning a middle- to lower-middle-class upbringing in the Bronx, where he was the youngest of six children supported by a father who managed a hardware store.
I would have been happy to trade childhoods with him. As a white child, I grew up in abject poverty which saw me homeless and living in a car often. By the time I was 17 years old, we had been evicted from 34 homes. One of the only silver linings of those evictions being that we occasionally ended up in majority-Black housing projects.
As that child in those projects, I also got to witness the very personification of heroism in single Black moms who often worked two or more jobs and sacrificed their own happiness to provide for their children, strong and courageous women who became my earliest and most enduring role models. Heroes who taught me that “Black America” was a great America.
But, that part of America — most especially those struggling to survive in our inner cities — has been all but abandoned by the entrenched elites from both political parties. An America all but voiceless, looking for an authentic champion. Could Stephen A. Smith be that champion?
Why not? And if so, why not the champion of the disenfranchised from every community in America. And if the disenfranchised, why not the working-class as well?
Trump has broken a great many molds over his lifetime, the most critical and lasting being the political mold. He shattered it. He has become the ultimate “un-politician.” He did so because of his business experience and success coupled with that all but unattainable “It Factor.”
One could argue that Smith has that “It Factor” as well, which allows him quite a bit of leeway to speak his mind or call out failure.
Going back to the Democratic Party and the loss by Harris, Smith said to Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, “I think that in light of those results we have to look at this election as a referendum on the Democratic Party. And America’s saying we’re not feeling where you are, we’re not feeling where you tried to go, we want no part of it, we’re not having it…”
Smith has continually called out the Democrats for focusing on name-calling, fringe issues and DEI rather than the ones the voters most cared about — such as immigration, the economy, education, crime and health care. While on Chris Cuomo’s program on NewsNation this week, StephenA once again called the Democratic Party “tone deaf” and “leaderless.” Many believe him to be correct on both counts — including Democrats.
If I were part of the Democratic Party brain trust in search of a winning presidential candidate, I might be seeking an “un-politician” with a backstory that connects with “real America”; has a massive platform; is independently wealthy and can tell the entrenched elites to stuff their “special interests”; has that all-elusive “It Factor”; and is not afraid to trash talk or call out failure. Trump won two elections checking those boxes.
If I were part of the Democratic brain trust, I would be reaching out to Stephen A. Smith.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
