By The Numbers: Trump-Kanye Axis Could Mark A Tectonic Political Shift
Something just happened that may launch a political disruption that completely upsets the traditional calculation for political elections. And that’s not an overstatement, because the margins are so close in so many states that a small shift in the current predictable alignment could have a major impact.
What happened? Grammy Award-winning rapper and producer and publicity hound Kanye West tweeted.
His initial tweet was simply “I like the way Candace Owens thinks.” Candace Owens is a black, conservative woman who believes in personal responsibility, opposes blacks blaming whites for all of their problems and thinks blacks should not be stuck on the “Democratic Party plantation.” So by the mainstream media narrative, she’s “controversial.” In fact, she just thinks black should think independently as humans, not collectively as a race.
The political left naturally melted down with everything from Kanye turning his back on blacks to having mental health issues to pulling a publicity stunt (the last of which would be totally believable except for what followed.) Kanye went on a pro-Trump tweet storm of epic proportions concluding with a signed, red MAGA hat. He and Trump had a relationship of some sort before the election.
White and black liberals, including singers such as John Legend, went to great lengths to attack, undermine and explain away his tweets. On Twitter, on every major leftist website, on Facebook, on Youtube, Kanye was pounded. So he caved? No. Kanye is not a conservative in any traditional sense, and is arguably a contributor to the decline of the culture. But he also is not one to run from controversy and is about as far from politically correct as possible. He just kept tweeting.
Then his wife, Kim Kardashian, jumped to support her husband on Twitter: “He’s a free thinker, is that not allowed in America?” Oh my!
This isn’t peanuts. Kanye West has 28 million followers on Twitter, and pretty substantial engagement from them. Kim Kardashian has even more, at 60 million. For comparison, President Trump has 51 million followers — but totally different followers from Kanye and Kim. They reach people who rarely give Trump or politics much thought.
But this was far from over. Chance The Rapper tweeted. Chance (Mr. The Rapper?) is a public critic of Trump, but posted: “Black people don’t have to be democrats.” He later made clear again that he doesn’t like Trump. But the latter is not nearly so important as the former. Chance has 7.7 million Twitter followers. This created an entire meme of peoples and groups that declared they don’t need to be Democrats. They’re pretty awesome.
“Jewish people don’t have to be democrats either,” tweeted Times of Israel blogger and Daily Wire writer Elliott Hamilton.
“Gay people don’t have to be democrats either,” tweeted gay and Jewish author Chad Felix Greene.
“Immigrants don’t either. I’m a proud Conservative Republican,” tweeted Anna Khait.
“Union Members don’t have to be Democrats either,” tweeted HBwriterMike
“Teachers don’t have to be democrats, either. #PoliticalFreedom ,” tweeted RoguePhilosophy
“Native Americans don’t have to be democrats,” tweeted Apache Paul
“If you’re #Mexican you don’t have to be a #Democrat ,” tweeted IncredibleDeplorable.
Does this really matter? Yes. In raw politics anyway. Maybe more. Of course, it’s always possible it could just blow over in a few weeks, because this age is supremely difficult to predict. But the frantic reaction suggests at least some see the threat of a Trump-Kanye axis making it OK for blacks to not have to be Democrats.
The reality that is largely unstated is that Democrats need black votes far more than blacks need Democratic leadership. A pretty strong case can be made that Democratic leadership has been fairly awful for blacks, and that is beginning to become obvious.
So here are the numbers. In 2008, 95 percent of black Americans voted for Obama, while 93 percent did in 2012. That’s above the modern average, but not by much. Blacks have generally been close to or at 90 percent voting for Democrat presidential candidates. The lowest it has been in modern times is 85 percent, way back in 1976.
That’s a colossally monolithic voting bloc, and an absolute necessity to Democratic success nationally. And it may be cracking, which is the tectonic part. If 80 percent of blacks vote Democratic, it’s possible Democrats become a permanent minority party. If 70 percent vote Democratic, its guaranteed — even if blacks do not vote Republican. Chance suggested the next president would be an Independent.
This has been a ticking bomb for Democrats for awhile.
Just last month, NPR was reporting that, “Black Voters Need More Convincing From Democrats In 2018.” Part of this is the fallout of seeing that eight years of a black Democratic president did nothing to improve the lives of blacks (or any other Americans, for that matter.) And part is the growing sense that Democrats have taken the black vote for granted and really only pay attention to them during bi-annual election seasons.
Newsweek was reporting the same in December, “Black Voters are the Democratic Base, but Dems are Awful to Them.”
The Washington Post reported last year a Power of the Sisterhood survey that found sharply declining support for Democrats among black women (outside of the unique conditions of Alabama Senate vote with Roy Moore.)
According to the survey: “The belief that the Democratic Party best represents the interests of Black women has dropped significantly, from 85 percent to 74 percent. In fact, more Black women think that none of the political parties represent them, up to 21 percent from 13 percent in 2016.”
In fact, this has been a theme for awhile in the mainstream media, perhaps to wake up Democrats. This does not mean the disenchanted will become Republicans, but if they do not vote Democrat, that party no longer has national electoral power.
Here’s what happens when black voters stay home. A recent analysis in the New York Times estimated that 36 percent of the 4.4 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 and stayed home in 2016 were black — although blacks make up less than 12 percent of the electorate. The percentage of blacks who voted in 2012 was 66 percent, but fell to 59 percent in 2016. And Trump won.
The so-called blue wave seemed to be changing that direction, at least heading into the midterms. It seems unlikely that the Kanye-Kim-Chance-Candace free-thinking breakaway from the Democratic stranglehold could affect November. But if such high-profile, popular members of the black community are willing to talk publicly about it, and not just fall into lockstep based on skin color, the ramifications for Democrats could be fatal.
They simply cannot win without about 90 percent of black voters. And some huge black names just said that blacks don’t automatically have to vote Democrat.
That is potentially tectonic.
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"seeing that eight years of a black Democratic president did nothing to improve the lives of blacks (or any other Americans, for that matter.)"
How can these dumb shit Republican sycophants lie with a straight face? The last Republican President left black unemployment on the rise hitting 16% but under Obama it was reduced to 8.2%. Trump has continued the trend down to 7.5% but that's only a gain of 0.7% while under Obama we saw a drop of nearly a full 8%. When will you bigots stop lying? When will you have the balls to admit at least some of President Obama's successes? Are you really so shallow and ignorant as to not see the progress made? Sure, you can have your differences and complain about the things you didn't like, but you can't simply pretend like none of the benefits ever happened.
1 – Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years
2 – Signed the Affordable Care Act which provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans
3 – Ended the war in Iraq
4 – Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden
5 – Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession
6 – Supported the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality
7 – Commuted the sentences of nearly 1200 drug offenders to reverse “unjust and outdated prison sentences”
8 – Saved the U.S. auto industry
9 – Helped put the U.S. ontrack for energy independence by 2020
10 – Began the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan
11 – Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits
12 –Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector
13 – Dropped the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent
14 – Reversed Bush-era torture policies
15 – Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba
16 – Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding by 70%
17 – Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act
18 – Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars
19 – Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act
20 – Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy
21 – Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification
22 – Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal
23 – He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women
24 – Nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice
25 – Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill
26 – Expanded embryonic stem cell research leading to groundbreaking work in areas including spinal injury treatment and cancer
You may not like everything he did, and that's fine to disagree over those points, but to flatly LIE about his record is getting old and just makes you look like nothing but a partisan moron or a racist who can't allow themselves to admit the "black President" did anything good for America.
What a bunch of BS that is. So the left wing 'Good Magazine' has a lot to say for Progressives. Obama did some good things, but just posting a list from Good Magazine doesn't do much other than give you something to read. Obama ended his last term as President with a 1.9 GDP.
The GDP was around 16K before the recession. It had hit a low of 8 or 9k when Obama took office. The recession was declared over before the middle of 2009. It took Obama 5 years to get it back up to the 16k and it was 18k when he left office. What is it now after a year and 4 months? The GDP has risen 4 to 6k since Trump was elected and it went up 2k from May 2013 until Trump was elected.
The topic is what did he do for blacks. As the video shows, many don't think he did anything.
Stay on topic.
i would think that's on topic unless you are stating nothing in that list applies to "blacks" ?
plus the article does state this:
correct ?
Obama cared more about foreigners than he did about black.
a great example of dodging the questions that i posed. i would appreciate if you would answer the questions i posed instead of making claims about who Obama supposedly did or supposedly didn't care about more.
now, does anything in that list that was given exclude (or not apply to) "blacks" ? and is this:
in the article ?
ah, what a great way to say "No matter what Obama did - it was bad. Everything on that list ? Bad ! Wrong !". I hear the Trump supporters whine that the "liberals" won't give him any credit for good things he's done - yet it seems to be true in case of the conservative minded giving Obama credit for good things he's done, huh ? I guess it's all about politics with some people and their side is always "correct" while the other side is always "wrong".
Understandable.
now, does anything in that list that was given exclude (or not apply to) "blacks" ? and is this:
in the article ?
(it'd be nice if you answered the questions since you called the list "off topic")
I'very already said in a previous comment that Obama did some good things, but there are things in that list that can"t be just listed and said these are the good things he did.
you still didn't answer the questions. you called the list off topic from the article which talks about "blacks" not needing to be democrats and that supposedly Obama did nothing for them - so this list was given and you stated it's off topic so now my questions:
now, does anything in that list that was given exclude (or not apply to) "blacks" ? and is this:
in the article ?
(it'd be nice if you answered the questions since you called the list "off topic")
I don't see anything on that list that applies specifically to blacks, who voted for Trump is surprisingly large numbers. Same with legal residents.
1 – Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years
Wow, he rescued the country? Try the slowest recovery from the recession ever. With how bad it was the country had no where to go but up; but let's give him a pass for not making worse than he did.
2 – Signed the Affordable Care Act which provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans
Health insurance is not the same thing as health care. When will the left learn that? What he and the Democrats did was give insurance companies a captive customer that was forced to buy their product. Great for them; but shitty for the rest of us. Offers no cost reductions to customers; unless you apply for government aid. Of course the plans come with nasty pills such as high deductibles, or premiums if you don't want to risk deductibles (great if you are poor and can only afford the cheapest insurance plan even with government assistance). If you miss a payment to the insurance company they will drop you like a bad habit.
3 – Ended the war in Iraq
Bush ended the Iraq war. Get your facts straight. Obama restarted the Iraq war by putting US troops back into a country that was/is loyal to Iran. He upped that by expanding the war in Syria. You can add Ukraine, Libya, and the continued military presence in Afghanistan to his list of accomplishments. So what exactly does Obama and the left have to be proud of.
4 – Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden
Wow, you really want to list that as an accomplishment? What did it do? Is Al Qaeda gone? No, it went even more radical and became ISIS/ISIL. Good job.
5 – Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession
Pork, pork, and more pork. But this was pork with strings attached. Oh, and those shovel ready jobs weren't so shovel ready as by his own admission.
6 – Supported the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality
He was for it after he was against it. Said one thing to get elected, and then did another. Really a man of principle.
7 – Commuted the sentences of nearly 1200 drug offenders to reverse “unjust and outdated prison sentences”
That is being called soft on crime. The criminals thank him the chance to continue their careers in crime among the normal US population.
8 – Saved the U.S. auto industry
Thought that was Bush that got the US auto industry past their first bankruptcy? Obama is the one that used the power of the US government to screw lenders out of the money they were owed; and put the us tax payer on the hook for a huge kickback to his union buddies at GM. No one has yet explained why the unions were owed ownership over GM. They should have been in line after the creditors and lenders. Of course the banks paid the government back by not giving GM loans- and making GM a ward of no interest loans from the Fed. If throwing billions at the auto industry learned nothing is called saving- you have a strange definition of saving.
9 – Helped put the U.S. ontrack for energy independence by 2020
Really? You have proof of this? Even after all of his failed green energy subsidies to companies that went bankrupt? Wow, just wow.
10 – Began the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan
Tied the US to a weak corrupt government in Afghanistan with a shitty SOFA. Oversaw the death of far more US troops in Afghanistan than Bush. Increased the civilian deaths of extrajudicial drone killings exponentially over Bush. When it comes to foreign affairs accomplishments Obama didn't have any.
11 – Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits
Signed an EO that has since been scrapped. Oh, and what part of illegal doesn't the left understand. If they are here illegally they need to be deported, period. Why are US laws less important than every other countries?
12 –Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector
Considering these two bozos were part of the cause of the economic meltdown you really think they did anything to prevent it from happening again? Wall Street, like the insurance companies, have the politicians in their back pockets. They laughed when Dodd-Frank was signed; and went back about their business like nothing happened.
13 – Dropped the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent
Easy to do by simply allowing them to die out.
14 – Reversed Bush-era torture policies
Better to kill the terrorists using extra judicial drone attacks, that might collect civilians as collateral damage, than risk having to go through the messy business of interrogating them for information. Of course you left out that those Obama released from detention centers went right back to Al Qaeda and the Taliban killing US troops.
15 – Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba
Ask any Cuban-American what they think about that. The Castros are no better than Kim. Why is it OK to soften the stance against Cuba, and no North Korea?
16 – Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding by 70%
Congress controls the power of the purse. Not the POTUS. Next
17 – Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act
And like Wall Street, the insurance companies, banks, and the auto industry- credit card companies were quaking in their boots./S
18 – Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars
Being reversed now. EO's suck don't they?
19 – Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act
Please stop. Made lunches so inedible that kids refused to eat them. Guess that is one way to fight obesity.
20 – Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy
Because knowing the sexual orientation of the person you are serving with is very damn important./S
21 – Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification
Does not apply if the victim is a white, straight, male
22 – Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal
Love it when people say you can't trust North Korea; but somehow think Iran can be. Obama's deal is not worth the paper it is printed on. It will not stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. It will allow their economy to grow so more money can be funneled to their nuclear program. The genie is out of the bottle. Russia and China will not allow sanctions to snap back into place in the UN Security Council. That is if our NATO allies will even go along with it.
23 – He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women
Wow, he signed a bill into law? Was that a real effort for him? Congress writes and passes the laws, remember?
24 – Nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice
So being being the first Hispanic is a good reason to make someone a Supreme Court Justice? Better make sure you are right.
Oops seems Democrats don't think being Hispanic is all that important when it is a Republican nominee.
25 – Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill
Again, Congress controls the power of the purse.
26 – Expanded embryonic stem cell research leading to groundbreaking work in areas including spinal injury treatment and cancer
Care to site those "ground breaking achievements" that Obama is responsible for? I am sure it would be news to the companies and researchers involved.
it absolutely does unless you think a "white, straight, male" has no sexual orientation or gender identification ?
looks like you should check out the history of his "for it after he was against it". He was for it first and pandered to those against to get elected (he knew the majority were against it when he supported it at the time [late 90s] and had to play "the game" [like every politician does]) -- and if you want to discuss a "man of principle" then look at all the past presidents as well as the current one, none of them really qualify.
i would read these:
it doesn't seem to be as "disastrous" as everyone makes it out to be
obviously it was to many conservative minded people or the policy wouldn't have been in place to begin with, huh ?
now some things on your list i might be inclined to agree with - but not all of it.
Ok, first, the bold part above isn't necessary. It's race baiting, it's childish. He was a US President. Skin color is 100% irrelevant.
You mean like arming Mexican drug lords? Or how about negotiating with terrorists? How about the highest number of mass shootings? What about the largest racial divide since the 60's?
There were benefits? Where the hell was I? Oh that's right, I spent most of his time in office deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess you had to be sitting around with your thumb in your ass to get those "benefits".
Now on to your list of "accomplishments":
You are going to give him credit for ending the war? His way of "ending the war" left such a vacuum in that country that we ended right back in there before a year passed. Not only did he NOT end the war in Iraq, he expanded the battlefield to include Syria.
He made the same decision as his predecessor. Shit, he made the same decision a brand new 2nd Lieutenant 5 minutes out of school. It's not spectacular. Especially when it couldn't have been done without the assistance of a Pakistani surgeon the Obama left to die at the hands of the Pakistani government.
With OUR MONEY. How much of it did we see come back to the taxpayers? Not a fucking dime. In fact, most of those "saved automobile companies" raised prices.
AFTER he increased troop presence in Afghanistan. Sorry, that dog won't hunt.
Yep, signed an executive order that goes against US Immigration law allowing ILLEGALS to stay in the US ILLEGALLY. Such a good role model.
Obama's administration shit on veterans and active duty service members from day 1. The VA is STILL fucked up and active duty soldiers had to wait for him to leave office to get a raise decent enough to live off of. Obama only gave pitiful 1% raises to the military during his whole time in office.
Yep. Good for you Obama. Made school lunches inedible.
Being "first" doesn't make you worth a damn. This is the same judge who forced a fire department to promote unqualified firefighters based solely on skin color.
Thanks to both of you.
So first, I hope you recognized that the childish race baiting was from the above article, not my words.
Second, I'm not going to bother to go through the details of how screwy a view of reality your second paragraph is, Fast & Furious was nothing of the sort, the negotiation is BS and the racial divide was all the bigots rising up when they found themselves living under a black President. It had zero to do with his performance, and mass shootings have been on the rise for decades.
I thank and salute you for serving our country. But that doesn't mean you can take such liberty with facts while dismissing his actual accomplishments or avoiding talking about them altogether.
"Obama lent the auto industry $57.3 billion and recovered $70.4 billion."
"cut the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years"
"Cut black unemployment from 16% down to 8.2%"
But all any Trumpite wants to focus on is the last .7% drop in black unemployment and the .5% drop in national unemployment, or that the auto industry hasn't paid back $9 billion of the $23 billion that they were lent under Bush. Are you unable to give any credit where credit is due because you just can't let him have a win? Are you so partisan that you can't accept that he was handed a country in financial free fall and did in fact make some good decisions that saved jobs and reduced unemployment and cut the deficit spending by 60%. Sure, maybe you got stuck in some sand pit in Iraq during his administration, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who did watch a narrow miss with what could have been a full depression instead of a recession. A lot of people likely kept their jobs because the bleeding had stopped and the healing began. Sure, it wasn't as fast as some wanted, but it went in the right direction. Many millions are also appreciative for the changes made during those years, the support for pay equity for women, bans on LGTBQ and in federal service removed, the removal of bans on gay marriage, all huge benefits to our nation, law abiding, tax paying American citizens finally getting equal rights that allow them to marry or serve our country openly.
Having debates over specific things you disliked is fine, but just proclaiming nothing good happened is to be beyond obtuse and completely unreasonable, which is why I must assume those proclaiming such things have some other reason for their irrationality, the most common being deep seated prejudices that they may have never even vocalized, but just get infuriated at what's always been in their minds taught them by parents and peers, the thought of an "uppity n%$#$%" making decisions for them or giving them orders. We found out that there are many willing to come right out and say it, but I believe that number is dwarfed by the number of closeted bigots out there who wouldn't ever say it out loud but think it all the time. That is what I believe was the cause of the recent uprising of white supremacists and Nazis and the increased racial tensions we find ourselves with.
It's not unreasonable. He did NOTHING for veterans, or active duty Soldiers. He armed Mexican drug lords and negotiated with the Taliban to get a deserter back and can't forget pardoned a traitor. (Funny how Wikileaks was praised when Bradley Manning broke the law, but suddenly it's hated when it exposed Clinton.) He forced a health insurance scam on the citizens of this country while exempting himself, his family, congress and many others. And yes, it is the worst divide since the 60's. There was no progress toward unity. The Obama administration pushed a divisive agenda and it worked.
Oh, again, the bold part above isn't necessary. It's race baiting, it's childish. He was a US President. Skin color is 100% irrelevant.
Kanye West is a narcissist egomaniac much like Trump.
The fact he has a new album coming out this week doesn't escape me either.
I'm not a fan of his and I'm pretty sure he isn't a Republican, but he does have 27 million Twitter followers and many of them are probably influenced by him.
Kanye, you have one really filthy mouth. It does make for good sales in the record business so I can forgive you for it. I want to thank you for the insight you have given us into what makes you tick.
Ignore the b.s.coming from the right. You aren't helping the diehard Republican Establishment one bit. You are in fact delivering a serious injury to the Democratic Establishment.
Your views are more liberal than mine but we can get along primarily because we are each independent thinkers. I appreciate that you are encouraging more blacks to think for themselves. Let's be real Kanye, old white people have been running the Democratic Party for years not only misleading blacks, but all of the special interest groups, Hispanics, Gays, Women, etc. Amazing isn't it, how the Establishment leadership of both Parties are so much alike.
Let's not start bashing all white people, after all, just as with black people it's really only a minority that have all of these racial problems and most of them aren't genuine.
It is understandable that you have some good thoughts about President Trump. He is no more a typical Republican than you are typical Democrat.
Are you serious about 2024? You have 6 years to show my you would be a good choice. Your black skin has nothing to do with whatever your qualifications for high office might be. The idea of having one free thinker followed by another is very appealing and I am not too trusting of who the Republicans might try and run after Trump. Their establishment is greatly weakened but it is still there.
Good luck to you and thank you for standing up and telling it like it is.
My gawd. Trumpism has seized upon the Kardashianism. Happy trails. And may the rushing waters cool the Rolling Rock.
I'm pretty sure most blacks care about what Kanye thinks the same way whites care about what Kim thinks. Zip.