Why it’s too soon to hail President Kanye
On July 4, Americans were baking in the summer heat, bored and under-stimulated after months in quarantine. Anti-racism protests were slipping out of the headlines, Joe Biden’s strong poll numbers were old news and many were stuck watching fireworks on TV.
We seemed to want something — anything — to distract us. Kanye West delivered by declaring his candidacy for president.
True, Donald Trump is president, so everything is technically possible. But as tempting as it is to follow Kanye down his rabbit hole (or to his Wyoming ranch), the best way to treat his latest pronouncement is as a late-summer diversion, rather than a serious presidential campaign.
The first barrier to Kanye 2020 gaining momentum is legal. Kanye is entering the race in the middle of filing season. The deadlines for getting on the ballot in large states like Illinois, New York and Texas have already passed and the deadline in Michigan is fast approaching.
Unlike Trump, who built a campaign during the primary and took over the Republican Party’s existing machinery in the election, Kanye is starting from scratch in the middle of the race.
In theory, he could still build up a political organisation and get on the ballot in states across the country, but in practice, that seems unlikely.
According to CNN, he hadn’t even registered with the Federal Election Commission, a basic requirement for running for president and fundraising.
Even if Kanye were to get on the ballot in the states where that’s still possible, his road to the White House would be difficult.
US politics are highly polarised: both Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Trump have strong bases within their own parties and fear of the opposition will likely keep most voters in their partisan homes. What’s more, only 29% of Americans have a positive opinion of him. If either Biden or Trump took a moment to remind the public of some of Kanye’s more controversial statements, such as the idea that “slavery for 400 years… sounds like a choice”, he might take even more damage.
Others have suggested that, given Kanye’s prior friendliness with Trump, his goal is to play the spoiler: that he’ll get on ballots across the country, siphon off young voters and African Americans from Biden and allow Trump to win by focusing on his base. But that also seems far-fetched.
As others have pointed out, many of Kanye’s biggest fans aren’t the young African
American men who would be Kanye’s political targets in this scenario.
According to a 2018 Yougov survey, 21% of Hispanics and 20% of whites had a favourable view of Kanye, while only 9% of African Americans did.
As Forbes’ Andrew Solender recently pointed out, views of Kanye have also polarised as he cosied up to the president: 34% of Republicans and 13% of Democrats view him favourably.
Favourability and fandom aren’t the same thing, but these numbers support what many have seen anecdotally: a lot of Kanye’s biggest fans are white and a Kanye candidacy wouldn’t exclusively attract African American Democrats.
Moreover, recent history suggests that simply being African American isn’t enough to win black votes.
In the 2020 Democratic primary, African American voters passed on charismatic black candidates with real presidential credentials, such as Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and, instead, supported Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg.
As Ted Johnson of the Brennan Centre for Justice has argued, many African Americans view elections pragmatically: they’ll vote for the candidate who is most likely to get into office and deliver policy victories on civil rights and other key issues.
Kanye — a long-shot third-party candidate with a history of controversial statements on race and a whole host of interests other than politics — doesn’t fit that bill and might have trouble gaining traction with big segments of Biden’s African American base.
None of these obstacles are insurmountable: Kanye could build an organisation quickly, find a new strategy and shock the world. But that seems unlikely.
The laws of political gravity, as well as literal election laws, apply to Kanye, just like they apply to The Donald.
If Kanye is putting together a campaign organisation in the days to come, we should start to take his run more seriously.
But, until then, we’ll need to find a more durable pandemic distraction to sustain us for the months to come.