Kanye West to run for president?

Frank Underwood

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Without deep structural changes, the conditions that led to the presidency of a demagogue like Trump remain the same. The fact that Biden's own supporters recognize his strengths are staying hidden and quiet shows that even they realize what a liability he is. Not to mention how they clutch their pearls every time a third party candidate comes out of the wood work.

Telling people they can't have healthcare in the middle of a pandemic shows what an abject failure our government is. Also, the evidence points in the opposite direction when it comes to Democrats defending democracy and the Republic. They didn't defend them when they meddled in the primaries during the last two election cycles. They didn't defend them when they supported the Patriot Act under Bush or the continued illegal spying of Americans under Trump. They refused to impeach Bush over war crimes to "spare the country" after Clinton's impeachment. In reality, it was because they were complicit in them. And yet these grifters were able create the faux "resistance" to Trump, despite giving him exactly what he wants.

Dangerous precedents have already been set, and the Democrats have their fingerprints on them along with the GOP. People are literally rioting over police brutality and mass incarcerations, and Biden's bragged about crafting/supporting legislation that have contributed to both. Biden and his surrogates are trying to bullshit people into believing he'll be the most progressive president since FDR. However, Biden's promise to his donors that "nothing will fundamentally change" is the actual outcome we can expect. I find it fascinating that Biden supporters/voters generally acknowledge how awful he is, which speaks to his indefensible record. However, I don't believe replacing evil with a different evil is the "solution."

I saw someone comment on Twitter "When they say 'Vote Biden bc Trump bad,' I hear 'Put the mask back on the capitalist death cult so we can go back to brunch.'" Honestly, that's what I hear too. Let racial and economic inequality continue to thrive, let the corporations loot from the public, and let bombs continue to be dropped. Just as long as life goes back to "normal."

The fact that Biden wants people to choose him to "fix" the messes he helped create is almost as precious as the people who believe he will actually follow through on that.
 
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Frank Underwood

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Yes and the key is defeating them this time. The alternative would be paving the way for 8 years of President Pence.
Snarky's right. Pence lacks Trump's showmanship and ability to read the room. Although Trump's instincts have dulled significantly, and he's now focusing on the culture wars. He even put out a ridiculous ad claiming Biden is a "trojan horse" for Bernie and AOC's "radical socialist agenda." If that were true, the anti-Biden progressives would likely suck it up and vote for him. And that's precisely what I mean about Trump's poor instincts. Calling Biden a trojan horse and talking about statues is a far cry from rightly hitting Hillary Clinton on jobs and trade.

Of course, Biden defeating Trump won't bring about any meaningful change. It will just pave the way for another neoliberal to take his place, or potentially another Trump-like figure in 8 years. I fear that people will become complacent if Biden becomes president, and we can't afford that. People need to continue to fight, whether that means a general strike or continuing to protest in the streets. It's blatantly obvious that electoral politics isn't the solution, at least not where things stand now. As the saying goes, power concedes nothing without a demand.
 
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Snarky Oracle!

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So many of the Democrats are making 2016 arguments. I don't want Trump for another four years either, but Biden's policies won't be any different -- he'll just talk nicer, but that just amounts to a camoflaged Republican.

I hate Trump, but most of the "centrist" Dems deserve him (centrist in terms of economics, but hard left Dems in terms of wokeness). And the end result won't vary all that much.

People who don't get that are still in a 2016 mindset.

And this is academic anyway: don't underestimate Trump's ability to insult his way back into the White House for another 4 years.
 
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Frank Underwood

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Kanye's dropped out, so all of the bourgeois liberals can rest easy once again. Or should I say easier, considering there are still other third party candidates in the race.
 
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Angela Channing

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Pemce doesn't have Trump's electable ... ummmm.... charisma.
I agree but it's more that just charisma. Four more years of Trump will more firmly establish right wing zealotry as being the norm making it easier to portray opposition candidates as a dangerous alternatives. It's like the quote from Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children "always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse". It will also be 4 more years to put in place systems to rig elections in favour of the Republicans such as restricting postal ballots.
Kanye's dropped out, so all of the bourgeois liberals can rest easy once again. Or should I say easier, considering there are still other third party candidates in the race.
I wonder how long it will take him to endorse Trump again?
 

Frank Underwood

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I agree but it's more that just charisma. Four more years of Trump will more firmly establish right wing zealotry as being the norm making it easier to portray opposition candidates as a dangerous alternatives. It's like the quote from Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children "always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse". It will also be 4 more years to put in place systems to rig elections in favour of the Republicans such as restricting postal ballots.
In 2004, we were warned about the right wing zealots who supported Bush and Cheney. The country was horrified over the Iraq War and the lie that sent us over there. Therefore, Bush was an existential threat that had to go. That was the first presidential election I was able to vote in, so naturally I did my duty and voted for John Kerry. I realized soon after that Kerry not only voted for the Iraq War, he also defended his vote while running for president! Of course, none of that matters to the Democrats now. Many of them have even befriended Bush.

We now find ourselves in a similar situation. Biden spent his political career helping to create the messes we're in, and now he wants us to believe he's the guy to fix them!

Democrats portray Democratic socialists as a dangerous alternative, and they rig their primaries in favor of conservative establishment hacks. That's not just in presidential primaries, but in down ballot races too. Democrats have taken a right wing stance on a variety of issues such as criminal justice, healthcare, foreign policy, and the minimum wage. Democrats refer to themselves as the resistance, yet they've supported many of Trump's policies and judges. On foreign policy, many Democrats have proven to be even more hawkish than Trump is.

Of course, that's not all Democrats have taken from right-wing playbooks. They also fear monger about their opponent, which is a tactic used when an appealing agenda is non-existent.

I wonder how long it will take him to endorse Trump again?
Oddly enough, Kanye appeared to be pulling voters from Trump. Trump dropped a full percentage point while Kanye was in the race, while Biden's numbers remained steady.
 
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Frank Underwood

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Ronald Reagan already established right wing zealotry as the norm. Since then, both Democrats and Republicans have shown contempt for the poor, love for the rich, and a lust for endless wars. We always get a right wing agenda anyway no matter who's elected. The fact that Trump's base has more zeal for their candidate doesn't make Biden's positions any less horrifying.

If the neoliberals didn't portray social democrats as "dangerous alternatives," we'd have a shot at getting the reforms people demand now. Unfortunately, the Dems chose a conservative establishment hack instead. Biden embodies Trump's racist, sexist, corporatist, and war mongering attributes, yet many liberals still believe voting for him is the only "moral" choice.

No amount of fear mongering about Trump will get me to change my mind about voting for the Green Party. A Biden presidency is simply incapable of solving the issues we face today. I just watched a Jimmy Dore video, and he was talking about how we effectively have only one party. As he put it, "it's a party of war, a party of oligarchy, and everything else is just theater."

 
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Frank Underwood

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Since this video was released, it's been revealed that Kanye missed the noon deadline to get on the ballot in South Carolina.

I'm surprised he's still running because I saw reports last week that he had dropped out. I heard his entire speech was filled with ignorance and falsehoods.
 

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No one in their right mind will vote for someone who is
I'm hesitant to take the seemingly obvious at face value after what happened last time but it does seem as if the technicalities of actually running will be enough in this case.
 

Frank Underwood

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I'm hesitant to take the seemingly obvious at face value after what happened last time but it does seem as if the technicalities of actually running will be enough in this case.
Kanye's far more off the rails then Trump was in 2016. For all of Trump's ignorance and lies, he was still able to outflank Hillary on jobs, trade, and even entitlements surprisingly.

In contrast, Kanye's more of a rambling mess without a discernible platform. Trump's also off his game this time around, and is ridiculously trying to portray Biden as a radical socialist.

Of course, Kanye wouldn't be viable even if he had a coherent agenda and was on the ballot in all 50 states. The two party system is simply too oppressive for any third party candidate to overcome. Neoliberals clutch their pearls whenever a third party candidate throws their hat in the ring, but it's not because they fear them winning. What they really fear is that a third party candidate will take votes away from their candidate, causing him to lose. They don't mind having a racist, corporatist war monger in the White House, as long as he's a Democrat.
 
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Frank Underwood

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I've heard he has a new album due for release any day now. The cynic in me says it was all a stunt for the worlds media to run in their nightly NEWS...and it worked.
It wouldn't surprise me, but I do get some satisfaction watching Biden supporters squirm whenever someone announces they're running as a third party candidate.
 

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I've heard he has a new album due for release any day now. The cynic in me says it was all a stunt for the worlds media to run in their nightly NEWS...and it worked.

I don't know that Ross Perot (the only third party candidate who had polled enough to actually be in the debates with the other two) was less unstable than Kanye West or Trump, or less of a media whore. In the end most third party candidates are dying for their 15 minutes of fame, so I am not surprised that West also wanted to milk that.
 

Frank Underwood

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While there have certainly been odd ball third party candidates such as Kanye West, Vermin Supreme, and Joe Exotic, not all of them are fame whores. Take the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, for example. They are what the Democratic Party and the Republican Party would look like respectively if they were uncorrupted and stood on principle. Mainstream partisans love to bitch about their existence, but they never demand that the politicians implement policies that improve peoples' lives. They'd rather punch down instead of punching up.

Vote Democrat or Republican, and you're still going to have a continuation of the corporate welfare state, a corrupt criminal justice system, and endless wars. This is why third parties are able to siphon votes from the two major parties in the first place. Despite the life long propaganda, some of us have managed to break the conditioning of voting for the lesser of two evils. The threat of a third party siphoning votes is supposed to help steer the major parties in a particular direction. If they refuse and opt to dig in their heels instead, that's their problem.
 
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