A PROBLEM: Weinstein scandal has Democrats in a bind – can they afford to cut their celebrity messengers loose?

Last year at the 89th Annual Academy Awards, then-Vice President Joe Biden walked on stage to a standing ovation to introduce Lady Gaga. He gave a passionate speech on the topic of campus sexual assault, about the need to speak up and “intervene in situations when consent has not or cannot be given.”

In 2013, Michelle Obama appeared at the Oscars via satellite from the White House decked in full evening gown and flanked by U.S. military service members to announce the winner of the best picture Oscar, which just so happened to go to director Ben Affleck’s “Argo.”

These are just two of the most prominent examples of how closely the Obama administration – and with it, the Democratic Party – has been tied to Hollywood, using them as messengers to push their agenda out to the mass public. . . .

The late night hosts who only last week were happy to help Chuck Schumer push the Democrats’ gun control message are suddenly mute when it comes to Weinstein. And this is exactly where the Democrats find themselves in a bind. The party has depended on celebrity messaging for the better part of eight years, and were clearly planning to depend on it heading into the 2018 and 2020 elections (remember Maxine Waters appearing to raucous applause as a voice of The Resistance™ at the MTV Movie Awards?).

But the days of happy backslapping with Ben Affleck and George Clooney are coming to an end for a party that now has to distance itself from celebrity-spokespeople who were content to lecture the rest of the country about their religion, their guns or their politics – but who couldn’t seem to bring themselves to clean up their own house by calling out one of their closest friends and business colleagues for preying upon vulnerable young women – for years.

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