West of Atlanta
“Why you so paranoid? Don’t be so paranoid.”
Jack Hughes anticipates a release we’re not all looking forward to. Chaos, they name is Kanye.
by Jack Hughes
There’s been a lot of ‘will he/won’t he’ talk about whether Donald Trump will run for president again in 2024, but we’d be wise to remember Trump isn’t the only unsuccessful 2020 candidate who’s mused about mounting another attempt. No, I’m not talking about the alliterative Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen nor Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins but, rather, the iconic artist/entrepreneur Kanye West.
When Kanye made the surprise announcement that he was going to run for president via twitter on July 4th, 2020, few thought he was serious. Within a matter of months, though, he was on the ballot in a dozen states and had loaned $12.5 million of his own money to his nascent dark horse campaign. Kanye was serious about running in 2020, so we’d be wise to take him at his word when he says he’s running in 2024.
On election night last November, Kanye received a disappointing 66,641 votes for president. (Interestingly, he also received 60,160 votes for vice president as he was on the ballot in California at the bottom of the American Independent Party’s ticket as Rocky De La Fuente’s running mate.) The problem, in part, was that Kanye had declared too late and had missed the filing deadlines to get on the ballot in 29 states.
Kanye clearly learned his lesson on being late out of the gate as he announced his 2024 run via Twitter on November 4th, 2020. This leads us to two logical follow up questions: First, did Kanye learn any other lessons from his inaugural presidential run? And second, has Kanye done anything since election day 2020 to suggest he’s leveraging those lessons to be a more competitive candidate the second time around?
You may be asking yourselves another question, should we seriously contemplate a second Kanye campaign? Every respected and respectable observer called Kanye’s first campaign a publicity stunt. By way of response, I’d remind everyone that when Trump first ran for president back in 2000 – as a Reform Party candidate – most of those same observers called it a publicity stunt. Trump’s second run was the clincher.
In fact, Trump might have inspired Kanye’s second ‘lesson-learned,’ that it’s better to run for one of the two mainstream parties than as a third-party candidate. To that end, Kanye might follow Trump’s example and run for the Republican presidential nomination. Before you dismiss it as insane, it’s not as far fetched as it might seem. Kanye told Fortune last year: “I would run as a Republican if Trump wasn’t there.”
Moreover, in 2020 Kanye received some of his best results in red states Trump would ultimately win such as Tennessee. Kanye garnered 10,256 votes in the Volunteer State, which represented 15% of all the votes he received nationwide. Kanye came third behind only Trump and Joe Biden in six Tennessee counties. Kanye’s best result in the country, in terms of vote percentage, was in Houston County, Tennessee.
Kanye, like Trump, isn’t a conventional politician – but he does have a basic political philosophy that should appeal to religious-right Republicans. For example, Kanye is pro-life, being against both abortion and capital punishment, specifically because the Bible commands “Thou shalt not kill.” In fact, Kanye’s entire campaign platform was derived from Biblical provisions, with chapters and verses set out on his website.
On the major ‘litmus test’ issue for rural Republican base voters, Kanye has been a vocal supporter of the Second Amendment. During a visit with Trump in the Oval Office back in 2018, Kanye told reporters: “We have a right to bear arms.” He then added, “illegal guns is the problem, not legal guns.” His comments quickly received a solid endorsement from the NRA on Twitter: “#Kanye couldn’t have said it better.”
The NRA’s message pointed to another truth about American politics when it said “the #NRA’s nearly six million members are glad to see a celebrity who gets it.” The key word in that sentence being the word ‘celebrity.’ We are in the age of celebrity politicians, where almost 50% of voters say that they’d support Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson for President and vote to elect Matthew McConaughey Governor of Texas.
(We would be remiss if we left the topic of celebrity politicians without mentioning the fact that Kanye’s former-step-in-law Caitlin Jenner is, as I write, running as one of the Republican candidates trying to unseat incumbent California Governor Gavin Newsom in the ongoing recall campaign. Jenner said she wouldn’t ask Kanye for his endorsement, but she has been sporting Kanye’s Yeezys shoes on the campaign trail.)
If Kanye were a more conventional candidate preparing for a second run, he’d be taking steps to consolidate his base and expand into areas where Trump fell short. Recognizing Kanye underperformed everywhere, a ‘heat map’ of his vote shows he had a very modest pocket of concentrated support in Arkansas, Mississippi, and, yes, Tennessee. So, he might invest time in Tennessee border states such as, say, Georgia.
The State of Georgia was the bellwether of the ball in the 2020 campaign in that it was one of the keys to Joe Biden’s victory. Republican presidential candidates had won Georgia in every election from 1984 to 2016 with only one exception (Clinton in 1992). With 16 electoral college votes, it’s in the Top Ten and has more than other states Biden flipped from ‘red’ to ‘blue’ such as Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The key to Biden’s victory in Georgia was Atlanta, which I highlight here because – as a good friend of The Experiment brought to our attention – Kanye has taken up temporary residency in Atlanta in a makeshift bedroom in the bowels of Mercedes-Benz stadium. The ostensible reason for his unorthodox accommodations is he wants to finish his newest studio album there after previewing it to over 80,000 Atlantans.
Kanye has therefore seen more people in his studio/stadium apartment in the last month than voted for him in last year’s election. Will the greater enthusiasm for his music dampen his enthusiasm for another presidential run? God knows…and I mean that literally. As perhaps the most enigmatic person on the planet, Kanye is a man of faith who feels he’s destined for greatness. Apart from God, we hardly know Ye.
Jack Hughes is a communications consultant based in Canada. His previous contributions to The Experiment include “Same of Thrones,” “Tippecanoe and Agnew Anew,” “Harris / Shuri 2020,” “Bidenfeld,” “Firth and Firthiness,” “The Ballot of Bill McKay,” and “The World Wants ‘The West Wing,’” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” “The GOPfather,” “Porqua, CoQau?” and “Quayle’s Hunting Season.” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
What do you think of today's email? I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback. I might even put ‘em in the newsletter if I don’t steal it outright.
Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Unless of course you were forwarded this email, in which case you should…
Someone asked me recently if I really did Noom or if this is just an ad. I really lost 40 pounds using Noom. I really have kept it off for more than a year. You really can, too. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.