What Kanye’s ‘run’ for President has taught us.
By: Michael Daniels
Tags: Joe Biden, Politics, 2020 Presidential Race, Kanye West, Donald Trump

American Politics is incredibly toxic, but it doesn’t have to be. We need to reverse our approach to politics & voting.

I do not own the rights to this awesome image.

You can breathe easy, Liberals. The electoral behemoth that was Kanye West has gone back to sleep, according to reports, and he can no longer steal Black votes from Joe Biden. However, the limited polling data that we have from his brief run shows us that he hurts Trump more than Biden. Just a few days ago, Chance The Rapper caused the Twitterverse to explode when he simply asked people why they supported Joe Biden over Kanye in a hypothetical situation where Trump was guaranteed to be ousted. Kanye is clearly unqualified for office, but why is it such a significant issue to ask how Biden would be better? I believe the answer is simple; we approach voting and politics backward.

Waiting on the World to Change

Joe Biden has over a 90% chance to defeat Donald Trump in November. Even with that, he still has incredibly low enthusiasm numbers. How is it that voters are overwhelmingly displeased with their choices, but simultaneously shunning those that voice their displeasure of our options? Especially given the fact that they had a hand in choosing who would ultimately be Trump’s opponent by way of the Democratic Primary Elections. This is a rather strange phenomenon that has a simple explanation. It seems that American voters haven’t quite grasped the concept that they have the power to shape their politics.

Most voters in the Primary just wanted the person that was best equipped to defeat Donald Trump. Given that Biden is the party’s most recent Vice President, has a 40-plus year career in politics, and has high name recognition as a direct result of the two previous points, he was viewed as the ‘most electable’ candidate. This was a title that was bestowed upon him by the Cable News punditry before he had even entered the race. I think the biggest issue that voters are dealing with now is that they just assumed that this was a fact. Not enough people vetted his track record, or bothered to look into what he proposed to do if elected. Not only that, but what kind of standard is ‘we want to beat the opponent’? Donald Trump is a Republican, so of course the Democrats want to beat him. We need to use this to our advantage. We should make the Democrats propose and later enact policies that will help us in exchange for our votes. We should go to the candidates with a list of demands, but instead, the candidates come to us with what they believe is best.

We should have litmus tests. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone; in fact, it shouldn’t be the same for everyone, but we the people need to set the starting point. If we forced candidates to lay out, in great detail, their vision for America and refused our support when it didn’t pass our test, what would we be capable of? If we hit the ‘skip song feature’ every time a candidate told us a program that our lives depended on implementing just wasn’t possible, would the mainstream consensus in American politics be to say to your voters what they can’t have? If we thought thoroughly and critically about what we needed in our lives and had constructive conversations with our fellow citizens to reach a consensus, would we need the mainstream media to tell us what was and what wasn’t electable? If you’re unsure, take it from someone who’s done all of those things, we’d drastically change how politicians approach politics. I’ve been in the Organizing sphere for a little under a year, and I’ve seen my local school board go from disregarding school meal policy as unimportant, to making it a top priority in their proposed budget. We have to start taking voting and the political process more seriously, for our lives literally depend on it now. Why do we allow politicians to tell us what isn’t possible? It’s our job to tell them what we want and need. It’s their job to make it happen. If they can’t do that, then why do they need to represent us?