The Kanye Effect

With Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, liberals needed to find a new punching bag to relentlessly attack 24/7.  Surprisingly, they found their man in Kanye West, who dared to do the unthinkable and meet with President Trump in the Oval Office.

West had enjoyed folk hero status on the left just thirteen years ago when he claimed that President George W. Bush, the bogeyman of the left at the time, did not care about black people.  President Bush briefly found himself in the left’s good graces when he became a Trump critic but he seems to have lost his newfound star power on the left after making phone calls on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh.

West received a lot of media attention in 2007 following the death of his mother in in 2009 for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.  He eventually started dating Kim Kardashian, shortly after her brief marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries, which lasted approximately fifteen minutes; not unlike most Hollywood marriages.  West eventually got around to marrying Kim, who ended up endorsing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election.  West has a lot in common with President Trump when it comes to rejecting the dictates of political correctness, during his meeting with President Trump, West talked about how he was “married to a family, that you know…there’s not a lot of male energy,” perhaps a subtle jab at his wife’s former stepfather Bruce Jenner, who now identifies as Caitlyn.  

In the wake of his Presidential campaign, President Trump repeatedly joked about offering West a cabinet position, even telling Jimmy Fallon that he would consider making him his Vice President.  This probably didn’t help Trump convince the large number of conservatives skeptical of him at the time that he would support their agenda; especially since West, a rapper, has many songs with filthy lyrics that degrade women, criticize the police and encourage violence.  More than a year after President Trump’s interview with Fallon, West met with President Trump during the presidential transition in 2016, one of many politicians and celebrities alike on both sides of the aisle to do so.  

For West, everything changed when he dared to tweet out “I like the way Candace Owens thinks,” referring to the popular You Tuber, also known as Red Pill Black, who now works for Turning Point USA.  In the wake of pushback from the “tolerant” left, West jumped to the conclusion that “we have freedom of speech but not freedom of thought.”  At this time, West began referring to the President as “his brother” and posted pictures of himself on social media wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.  In the period between West’s tweets in support of Owens and his meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, Mrs. Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, met with President Trump in order to convince him to pardon convicted drug trafficker Alice Marie Johnson, which he did.

The media went into full meltdown mode before the Kanye-Trump meeting in the oval office.  Self-appointed leaders of the African-American community began directing comments at West that would have caused the immediate firing of a white person for making the exact same comments.  CNN’s Bakari Sellers held up West as an example of “what happens when Negroes don’t read” as host Don Lemon laughed On the exact same program, “Republican Strategist” Tara Setmayer referred to West as the “token Negro” of the Trump administration and suggested that “black folks are about to trade Kanye West in the racial draft.”   Meanwhile, many conservatives would gladly trade Setmayer and other so-called Republican Strategists Ana Navarro and Steve Schmidt in the “political party draft.”  Lemon accused Trump supporters of using the N-word to describe West in the past, especially after West made his distasteful remarks about President George W. Bush.  It seems as if the same people who praise politicians for “evolving” on issues such as gay marriage can’t stomach the fact that West may have “evolved” as well, just not in the direction they had hoped for.  

The media attacks did not stop after the President’s meeting with West in the Oval Office. Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, appearing on MSNBC, described West’s speech as “white supremacy by ventrioloquism,” where a “black mouth is moving, but white racist ideals are flowing from Kanye’s mouth.”   If Bill O’Reilly still had his long-running Fox News show, “The O’Reilly Factor” on the air, I have no doubt that he would award Dyson the coveted “Pinhead of the Week” award.  Perhaps the regular panelists who would help O’Reilly pick out the Pinheads of the Week, Bernard McGuirk and Greg Gutfeld, could have chosen either Bakari Sellers, Tara Setmayer, or Don Lemon as their picks for “Pinhead of the Week.”

While the media chose to focus on his use of the word “motherf***er” in the Oval Office, West actually did make some good points during his meeting; although most conservatives probably did not appreciate his advocacy about ending stop and frisk and activism on behalf of releasing Larry Hoover, described by Biography as a “murderer, thief, organized crime, drug dealer,” from prison. In spite of his misguided activism on certain issues, West did possess an admirable amount of knowledge on the other issues facing the country, particularly economic issues. Anyone who says that West’s statements lacked any substance clearly did not pay attention. Perhaps the on-air personalities on CNN eager to trash the “minstrel show” should have read the transcript on its own website.  

West eventually got around to addressing the elephant in the room, the reason why the left hates the fact that he, as a black man, supports President Trump: “people expect that if you’re black, you have to be Democrat. I have conversations that basically said that welfare is the reason why a lot of black people end up being democrat. They say, you know, first of all, it’s a limited amount of jobs. So, the fathers lose the jobs and they say we’ll give you more money for having more kids in your home and then we got rid of mental health institutions in the ‘80s and ‘90s and the prison rates just shot up.”

West also stressed the need to “bring jobs in America,” admitting that America’s “best export is entertainment and ideas” while adding a critical point that echoes the rhetoric used by President Trump on the campaign trail: “when we make everything in China and not in America, then we’re cheating on our country.”  West made the argument that “we’re putting people in the position to have to do illegal things to end up in the cheapest factory ever, the prison system.”

All of this hostility towards West raises the question of why the media and the left see West as such a threat.  The “Kanye effect” definitely has not spread throughout Tinseltown, many of West’s closest friends, including John Legend, have expressed disgust at West’s political commentary.  Considering the fact that the left often times understands better than the right that politics flows downstream from culture, perhaps the media-Democratic Party industrial complex worries that West’s support for President Trump may influence African-Americans living outside the media and political bubbles; many of whom admire West’s music.   

Should that happen, even to a small degree, the Democratic Party could face devastating electoral consequences. In the months following the 2012 Presidential election, The New York Times put together an interactive map called “Presidential Math: Demographics and Immigration Reform.”  It begins with the 2012 electoral map with adjustable knobs to change the population growth rate, Democratic share of the vote, and the distribution of illegal immigrants among five racial demographics.  

In reality, Mitt Romney carried 24 states with a total of 206 electoral votes in the 2012 Presidential Election.  The Democrats received 40 percent of the white vote, 95 percent of the black vote, 72 percent of the Hispanic vote, 76 percent of the Asian vote, and 61 percent of the vote among people not identifying with any of the preceding races.  A recent Rasmussen poll pegs President Trump’s support among African-Americans at 36 percent.  Adjusting the Democratic share of the black vote from 95 percent to 64 percent on the 2012 electoral map would have increased Mitt Romney’s number of electoral votes from 206 to 302, thus giving him the election.  A higher Republican share of the black vote would have given Romney Florida, Ohio, Michgan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.  That does not even include what would have happened had Romney captured just four percent more of the white vote.  That alone would have given Romney Florida, Ohio, Pennsyvlania, Iowa, and New Hampshire; in other words, more than enough states to win the Presidential election. Byron York pointed this out as certain members of the political class attempted to convince Republicans that they lost the 2012 Presidential Election because they did not win enough support from Hispanics, specifically pointing to the most recently elected President at the time, George W. Bush’s 44 percent of the vote.  It turns out, Republicans would have needed more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote in order to win in 2012; assuming no changes in the vote pattern of any other racial demographic.  

The interactive map, at the very least, shows how dependant the Democratic Party has become on driving up their share of minority votes in order to win Presidential elections.  The left has assumed that diving into the sewer of identity politics will permanently help them secure the votes of these groups.  The left has virtually no other ideas to fall back on, besides socialism, should their master plan of securing minority votes by going into the identity politics gutter fail.

Fast forward to 2018, and Michael Goodwin of The New York Post pointed out that “the left fears West could be a leading indicator that Trump’s appeal to the working and middle classes is cutting across racial barriers.”  That may have already happened. Despite the media painting President Trump as a racist, he did slightly improve on Romney’s performances among African-Americans and Hispanic voters.  The thought of further improvement among these groups by President Trump and the Republicans in the 2018 election or even the 2020 Presidential Election as a result of the “Kanye effect” terrifies liberals, which explains why the rapper known as “Ye” has become public enemy number one on the left.