Does Oprah have a death wish?

CHICAGO (AP) - Forget the girl of YouTube videos. The real Obama girl is doing her part for the candidate. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey plans to hold a Sept. 8 fundraiser for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama at her palatial estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., according to campaign spokesman Dan Pfeiffer.

Obama has raised more than $58 million for his White House bid. Forbes magazine estimates that Winfrey, the Chicago-based host who boasts a lot more, including a magazine, is worth $1.5 billion.

Obama already enjoys the support of Hollywood moguls like David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Winfrey's fundraiser is another chance for him to tap into money in California, which was his top donor state from April through June with a total take of $4.2 million.

Winfrey is a well-known fan of Obama, calling him "my favorite guy" and "my choice" on CNN's "Larry King Live" last year before he announced he would run for president.

This threatens to throw a serious monkey wrench into Hillary's plan to be proclaimed the Democrat candidate. Oprah can command at least 5 million women who have never registered to vote before in their lives to register and turn out to vote for anyone she chooses to anoint.

These Oprah brigades are invisible to pollsters too because a polling organization will ask if someone has voted regularly before and if not they will not sample them as they are not considered "likely" voters.

This could be enough to put Obama over the top in a victory that neither the MSM nor talk radio and the blogs will see coming.

I used to be sure that Oprah would use this power on behalf of Hillary if she got the nomination, but now I am beginning to doubt that. If Hillary is elected president that will mean that Oprah will no longer be the most powerful woman in America and I don't think she will give that up without a fight. The fact that Obama is black gives her the perfect excuse to oppose Hillary and if Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination Oprah can go silent and not turn out her pod-women to the polls.

In that case Hillary would lose to Fred Thompson or Rudolph Giuliani as badly as Kerry lost to Bush, at least.

If I'm smart enough to figure this out you can bet the Clintons are as well. If you know of any celebrity dead-pool out there you might want to put a few bucks down on Oprah's nude partially decomposed body being found in a dumpster along Lakeshore Dr. sometime in the not too distant future.