The Democrats’ Empty Celebrity Candidates

On the menu today: Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have their share of celebrity candidates, but the Republicans’ celebrity candidates, if defeated, are likely to go away. The Democratic celebrity candidates of recent cycles keep demonstrating a peculiar ability to turn their failures into greater fame and continue to reappear on the national stage.

The Curse of the Celebrity Candidate

This cycle, Republicans have gotten grief, some of it deserved, about “celebrity candidates.” Mehmet Oz is learning that running for Senate is harder than hosting a daytime television show, and Hershel Walker is finding that it was easier to evade linebackers than to lay out his positions clearly. (The outlook for both candidates has brightened somewhat in recent weeks.)

But if Oz or Walker fail in their bids this year, they will probably go back to private life, and you’ll never have to think about them again. (You’re not going to find many better opportunities in GOP politics than as the Republican nominee in an open-seat Senate race, in a state Trump won once, in a midterm-election year, with an unpopular Democratic president in the White House.)