It was only a matter of time before Shonda Rhimes jumped head first into the 2016 presidential race in her political juggernaut “Scandal.”
The fictional race on the ABC hit show is so close to the real one, it comes complete with its own Trump-like character, Hollis Doyle, an over-the-top billionaire Republican candidate with a penchant for the dramatic, played by Gregg Henry.
There are other hard-to-miss parallels, including a former First Lady running for president whose former husband, the current commander-in-chief, was caught having sex in the Oval Office with a women he wasn’t married to.
But that’s where the similarities end. While “Scandal’s” race for The White House focuses mostly on the Republican side, it looks nothing like the 2016 GOP field.
Here are the signs “Scandal’s” presidential race is written by hard-core liberals:
1. “Scandal’s” GOP field only has three candidates
When the 2016 presidential race began in April of last year, the Democratic field had five candidates, which quickly turned to three, then two: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile on the Republican side, the race had a record-breaking 17 candidates, almost as big as an Australian football team (we have no idea what that is, but they have 18, apparently). And it stayed crowded up until recently.
2. Of the three Republican candidates on the show, two are women, including the sitting vice president.
Leave it to Shonda Rhimes, a staunch Clinton supporter, to turn two-thirds of the GOP candidates into women, including the vice president of the United States. While it’s an adorable thought, pigs will fly, then hunt, before the GOP has more women presidential candidates than men.
3. “Scandal’s” sitting Republican president is so moderate, you’d be forgiven for mistaking him for a Democrat
Not only does Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) not seem like a Republican president, he can make Bernie Sanders look like a Tea Party candidate. He’s released a terrorist from prison, he spends as much time fighting conservatives as he does Democrats, and he has affairs in the Oval Office. Like, a lot of them.
4. The show’s two Democratic candidates are minorities
While that kinda makes sense, this year’s real-life Democratic field featured nothing but a bunch of white folks, even the one wearing pantsuits.
5. Two of Republican candidates on the show are completely sane… and a lot less entertaining
While the real 2016 race is bonkers, the one on “Scandal” seems tame by comparison. Two of the three candidates actually know stuff. Both Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) and Susan Ross (Artemis Pebdani) are smart as a whip. The third is a Trump-like billionaire named Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) who rails against border-crossers.
They can recite facts and laws and policies backwards. If only the real race had such capable, policy-focused GOP candidates.