Jemele Hill warns Democrats to take Stephen A. Smith ‘seriously’ as presidential candidate

The idea of Stephen A. Smith running for president has new life after Smith’s sitdown with CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend.

And because CBS national correspondent Robert Costa likened his experience covering Smith to Donald Trump heading into 2016, the media is ablaze with debate over how seriously to take a Smith run.

Some believe Smith’s candidacy is a joke, while others are concerned he could ride charisma and contrarianism to a nomination, much like Trump a decade ago.

In a live stream breaking down the latest news, Smith’s former ESPN colleague and frequent critic, Jemele Hill, offered a strong warning to Democratic party officials not to overlook Smith’s candidacy.

“If I’m the Democrats, given Stephen A.’s name recognition and his constant ability to attract audience, to speak in soundbites, to debate … and I see Stephen A. constantly talking about running for president … he’s already got the media wired. The Democrats need to take him seriously,” Hill said.

“He’s a threat. If you’re a Democrat who wants to run for president, or if you, as the party in general, don’t want someone like Stephen A.’s popularity or don’t want people to start paying more attention to his politics, and you don’t want people to give more consideration to him running, then you nip this in the bud. You start taking him seriously.”

Hill believes that beyond Smith’s name recognition and communication skills, the First Take host also possesses qualities that will appeal to Americans come election time. These qualities are part of what made Smith popular on ESPN: his masculine swagger, his centrist perspective, and his life story as an emblem of the American dream, making it from Hollis, Queens, to national television.

However, Hill also believes that Smith’s both-sides rhetoric could leave him susceptible to outside influences. In particular, Hill cautioned that if the Democrats do not address Smith seriously now, conservative forces could propel him to greater prominence — in part, Hill said, to sabotage Democrats’ chances with an instigator like Smith.

“Stephen A. is going to be able to generate a lot of donor interest,” Hill explained.

“Donors who are powerful, donors who are in those rooms that we don’t talk about. And if it means undermining the Democrats, you best believe a lot of Republicans will get behind Stephen A.”

While Hill acknowledged that Smith would face similar challenges to other racial minority candidates to appeal to white Americans, she believes Smith will say the right things to cut through to white voters. And unlike mainstream politicians, Hill emphasized that Smith has a massive built-in fan base — one that inevitably contains large swaths of white sports fans.

“I could certainly see a scenario where you have white voters who are intrigued by Stephen A. Smith. He didn’t become the face of ESPN because everybody hates him. He has a fan base,” Hill said. “He has name recognition. And frankly, considering how uneducated and uninformed the public can be about voting and staying on top of things, it would not surprise me if Stephen A. … is on somebody’s ballot or announcing a presidential run.”

So far, nobody seems to believe Smith is poised for victory. Certainly, it took a strange confluence of factors for Trump to break through in 2016.

However, Hill is one of the more prominent voices sounding the alarm that Smith could mimic Trump in a different way — by turning the primary process into a circus that benefits him alone.