Reflecting on Kid Rock’s Presidency
Welcome loyal patriots to America’s number one cable news program, Everything is Fake News! I’m your host, Mike Cernovich, and tonight we will be looking at the incredible political career of Kid Rock, 46th President of the United States, as he leaves the White House after serving two successful terms.
Having conquered the music world with his note for note copy of All Summer Long, Rock set his sights on politics. After the astonishing victory of Donald Trump, various narcissistic entertainers around the country had a moment akin to kids seeing the Sex Pistols in the 70s. “If those talentless hacks can do it, why can’t I?”
It was in the first and final debate with Debbie Stabenow that Rock demonstrated just how MAGA Mindset the man could be. While the Senator rambled on and on about debt ratios and financial reform, Kid grew increasingly frustrated with the sluggish pace of the debate. As he was scheduled to appear on Dancing With the Stars later that evening, he made the boldest move ever seen in world politics. Grabbing the confused Senator, Rock body-slammed her on stage while blaring Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue. Rock, standing triumphantly over his elitist foe, chanted “USA! USA!” as the audience roared in approval. He then answered the remaining questions from the debate moderator by quoting Lynyrd Skynrd songs. He went on to win the election by a 10-point margin, only partially due to the death of Stabenow at the debate.
Rock’s time in the Senate was noted for his injection of real American culture into the chamber. Rather than waste vigor debating legislation, he used his floor time to sell noteworthy products and rightly depreciate celebrities that had reviled him in the past. His two key pieces of legislation, allowing for senators to make floor votes from any American strip club and replacing e pluribus unum with “Love It or Leave It” as the nation’s motto, were well received. These monumental successes for America made him an obvious choice for President following Donald Trump’s third term. President Trump, seeing the energy Kid possessed (in addition to the ratings he might sustain in his Oval Office reality program airing on Fox), threw his support behind Rock.
Along with his running mate Tila Tequila, Rock embarked on the most ambitious campaign in history, touring the nation with a carnival staffed with 135 people. His promise to “Make America Even Greaterer Again” was well received by the 140 million Americans who mystifyingly lost access to health care in 2017. Free weed and booze were distributed at all campaign events, with those suffering from cancer receiving extra doses of Satori and Bruce Banner #3.
Even after closing all globalist newspapers with Trump’s “Stop Fake News Act of 2019,” there continued to be opposition to his presidency and his chosen successor. The Democrats hosted a field of 17 candidates vying for their party’s nomination, but few were able to break away from the pack.
The Dirtbag Left, having failed to stop Trump and create socialism in America, saw the error in their ways and decided to rebrand their movement and push more measured alternatives to the governing order. Called “Fuck You and Your Mom” Democrats, they recruited Flavor Flav to run with Robert Downey Jr. to challenge Rock. The two campaigns decided against traditional campaigning in favor of a series of documentaries developed by Michael Moore and Dinesh D’Souza. With the polls tight through October, a fortunate turn of events put Kid Rock in office: Flav and Downey were found dead two days before the election in an apparent drug/sex overdose at Comet Ping Pong.
Following in the footsteps of Trump’s second and third inaugurations, all citizens in good standing were required to attend one of the simultaneous inauguration events across the country. Classifying kale and avocado toast as narcotics and placing sin taxes levied on said items paid for entertainment at the assorted gatherings. Rock decided to pattern his inauguration parade on the greatest fictional take on the Presidency in modern history: President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
One of his first executive orders was to change the way Grammys were awarded. Rather than being voted on by industry insiders, the top awards would now go to the most popular acts of the year. Demonstrating his brass creativity, President Rock posthumously took awards away from previous winners and redistributed them to more deserving musical acts. Rock personally snapped up all of Radiohead’s Grammys, decrying it as “arty nonsense made by foreigners” and gave the trophies to himself.
President Rock’s foreign policy categorically made America greaterer by demanding back payment for all foreign aid from mooching countries around the world. When world leaders laughed at the President at G20, Rock validated his MAGA approach by bombing El Salvador, showing globalist leaders what America was made of.
Rock’s ambitious budget promised free healthcare, ammunition and jet skis to anyone who voted for him. Top donors would be given beachside property in Oklahoma. Since all jobs had been made government work in the Twitter War of 2020, it meant all domestic opposition was fired from their places of employment. These jobs were redistributed to more worthy Americans. To fill the vacancies in medicine, law, education, engineering and finance by the vacancies, all credentials were classified as elitist and superfluous.
Sadly, the Deep State would not stand for Rock’s populist agenda and struck to destabilize America to stop it from taking hold. The country went into a financial spiral due to nefarious academics and economists, who wrote critically of the seven-sentence budget.
President Rock’s financial program was built on the premise that back payment for foreign aid would fund its various provisions, yet only Mexico had paid anything for the border wall after it became clear that it would serve to keep Americans from illegally entering Mexico.
Rock arrested all opposition to his Presidency under the “Muslims and Liberals Act of 2023,” and fought to bring the death sentence to the group’s leader, Hilary Clinton. Clinton had died in 2021, but President Rock made sure her body was exhumed and executed for her crimes.
When we return from our break, we will get to the bottom of the most pressing issue facing America today: the Clinton email server. Stay tuned for our two-hour investigative report with Attorney General James O’Keefe into this unspeakable crime and how it continues to work against the Rock Presidency and threatens the very foundations of all that Makes America Greaterer.
I only know this guy from Diners Drive Inns, and Dives. And he wouldn’t stand a chance against
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho
Now that is speach-ifying!Report
yeah, I was gonna say “‘Idiocracy’ was a comedy, not a documentary,” but some days I don’t know any more.Report
The way liberals like to reward the lower classes with more welfare for having more kids and importing third world immigrants it’s more of a preview of things to come.Report
When it came out, I said “That’s the future of America”. I continue to stand by that statement.
The fact that I’ve read two articles about Lena Dunham (LENA DUNHAM!!!) and her twitter posts only convinces me we’re on target for an Idiocracy society. No, not a documentary….a forecast.Report
I’m nearly 50 and from long-lived stock, but I fervently hope I will be dead by the time we’re all the way there.Report
filly,
Too bad for you. The “unnatural selection” is in the hands of the Powers that Be, and they like folks sadistic as they are. (Well, it is unless they burn for the idiots that they are, but… there’s a reason they’re the powers that be).Report
Not all that far fetched.Report
The sad truth is that Donald Trump’s popularity remains stubbornly high in areas where Democrats need it to drop the most:
One of the big fights about the 2016 election, on the left and out of the left, is how much of Trump’s victory can be blamed on racism and white resentment and how much can be blamed on HRC being a bad, uncharismatic, and too corporate candidate. Could Bernie have beaten Trump? I am doubtful that Bernie would beat Trump but he wouldn’t have performed worse than HRC. I do think white racism and resentment is a good part of Trump’s popularity and I think people ignore this at their peril.Report
Another good essay on the policies of white resentment from the Times:
Report
Ah the NYT. You can always count on them for a white folks are racist screed. Clearly you are part of their target audience.Report
The NYT really is as screwed up as people say.Report
So instead of attacking the argument on the basis of (a) the NYT = fake news, and (b) the essay was written by some elite, out-of-touch professor, tell me what it gets wrong. What points do you disagree with and why?Report
1) That opposition to affirmative action and de facto open borders is racist.
2) The claim that the anger is caused by unjustified racism justified anger hipsters and yuppies looking down their noses at them. I’m sick of people looking down their nose at mean making fun of me because I don’t have trendy hip taste in food and entertainment; these people are a cancer on the country they need to be dealt with.Report
Calling people a cancer to be dealt with may not be the best way of making the point you want to make.Report
No no, you see, he looks down on the because they looked down on him first.Report
Having read the article, I don’t see where the author says that opposing open borders or affirmative action is, de facto, racism. And while she does believe that a lot of the anger is unjustified, she doesn’t necessarily say it’s racist. Her argument is that the anger is not justified because it’s based on emotion rather than fact. White resentment doesn’t necessarily translate as racism.
Are you going to tell me that Big Tweet’s embrace of birtherism wasn’t based on racism, on an attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president and define him as “other?” Or that Tweet didn’t play on class, race, and status anxiety to help win the presidency? Or that some of his voters weren’t stone cold racists?Report
Having read the article, I don’t see where the author says that opposing open borders or affirmative action is, de facto, racism
Shy called it racial resentment another way of saying racism.
Or that Tweet didn’t play on class, race, and status anxiety to help win the presidency? Or that some of his voters weren’t stone cold racists?
So now class anxiety is the same as racism. You’ve demonstrated that the contemporary left doesn’t give a damn about people like me.
Resentment is word elites use to delegitimize the grievances of the mass. It perfectly acceptable for journalists and professors to complain about the Koch brothers but as soon as a UPS driver complains about college proffers looking down their nose at him it becomes resentment.Report
This stuff doesn’t have any semantic content. Whether birtherism is racist or not really misses the point. It’s two groups flinging masses of … something smelly… at each other with siege engines. Both are quite used to the way their projectiles smell.
If it was racist,it … “discovered’ vast troves of latent racism amongst its adherents. But since the phenomenon began with Bill Clinton, it’s pretty clear to me that race is very nearly irrelevant, or it just adds needless information. I was in this country when John Kerry, who is not very racially …interesting, was given the Swift-boat treatment to effective… effect.
It does not matter. The message is Apocolypse-Lite, it provides a gathering-point for free-floating anxiety and the disappointment of people who are quite frequently exhausted, who’ve been whipsawed by the economy and have the nearly unfoundable belief that they’re being screwed, even as they do better materially than people ever have. Sure, there’s a flatness to the economy, a tepditiy but look around you. Everything that’s not housing. health care and education is more affordable than ever in terms of man-hours.
IMO, we’ve sown the wind – subsidized these things – and now we reap the whirlwind – they cost, in cases, a whole lot more. Each is sort of a mania.Report
Okay, I’ll bite: How are you going to deal with them?Report
Either re-educate the whites and/or import more foreigners and illegals. Soon you won’t have to worry about those “racist whites.”Report
Be enacting policies that drive them nuts and eventually drive them to leave the country, James Michael Curley drove the WASP elites out of Boston; if we keep electing people like Trump eventually the snobs will leave the country.Report
Her term was white resentment, which doesn’t necessarily mean racism.
And if we keep electing people like Tweet, there won’t be much of a country left to leave.Report
That’s some plan.Report
Cleek’s law is realReport
A vision of the future: “Wait. How come Michigan voted for Kid Rock?”
Well, assuming he runs rather than merely raps the vote.Report
Yeah, I don’t doubt it — it’s just seeing it in the flesh and allReport
I didn’t want to elevate the piece to the point of disputing its points. There are some things that should simply be spit upon. It’s hateful and racist and transparently false. There are occasions when the benefit of correcting a viewpoint is outweighed by the cost of engaging with that viewpoint.Report
In other words, you’re not going to address the article on based its merits or lack thereof because you don’t want to be bothered dealing with the author’s claims rationally. You’d rather get all hissy about it and accuse the author of racism because it doesn’t suit your narrative. Got it.Report
Did you read the first sentence of the article? It stereotyped white people.Report
Yes I did. Who did it stereotype? All white people or just the angry ones. I suppose you’re going to tell me that resentment and anger had nothing whatsoever to do with Tweet’s getting elected. Instead, he eked out an electoral college victory because of his policy brilliance and his presidential personality. Tweet’s whole campaign was all about resentment, much of it justified. So no–she didn’t start her essay with a stereotype.Report
You’ve made four comments in this exchange. In every one of them you’ve put words into my mouth. I’m not going to engage in this.Report
Of course you’re not. You’d rather rant than answer legitimate questions. Then you can complain about how you tried to engage in debate, but some nasty liberal put words in your mouth. I get it.Report
Hey, that’s funny. You replied by putting words into my mouth.Report
I thought you were going to disengage.
I’m not going to engage in this.
Guess not.Report
“I thought you were going to disengage.”
That was the plan, but your response was too funny to ignore.Report
Yes I did. Who did it stereotype? All white people or just the angry ones.
She said their anger was motivated by race rather than being motive by the cultural elites like her looking down their noses at them. It allows her to look down her nose at people like me while feeling morally superior.Report
It can’t be motivated by both? Tweet certainly played to both resentment of elites and resentment of the other. Since his win, however, he’s filled his cabinet with a lot of the Goldman-Sachs type elites he railed against on the campaign trail and doubled down on the resentment of the other. The whole Voter Integrity Commission, for example, is an effort to crack down on voter fraud, which is basically non-existent, and is largely justification for an effort to keep the wrong people from voting–mostly because they tend to vote for Democrats.Report
Michelle:
First the article would have to have merits that are capable of being addressed. When the first line of the piece is, “White resentment put Donald Trump in the White House” and the picture with the article is a confederate flag, I know it is liberal bullshit.
I thought it was Russian hacking that put Trump in the white house or maybe their mind tricks which made Hillary forget where Michigan is.Report
The great thing about this dumb line of argument is that in any situation where more than one thing is the cause, you can use it to completely disparage any other individual cause.
“Health care costs are high because of heart disease? I thought health care costs are high because of diabetes!”
10 minutes later…
“Health care costs are high because of diabetes? I thought health care costs are high because of heart disease! Make up your mind!”
Clearly, health care costs are high with no cause at all.Report
The problem is that she just makes a lot of assertions with no evidence, taking tribal liberal beliefs as if they were self-evident. If her intended audience is just other tribal liberals then that’s fine, but there’s not even a whiff of a concession that people on the other side might have rational reasons for their different beliefs and choices. There’s no point in a non-liberal diving through it because there’s nothing about it that invites serious discussion.Report
@kenb
Here is the issue. Racism is a lot more than overt actions and racism and bigotry should not need to be cartoonishly overt to be called as such. There are times when racism and bigotry can be overt and you can still find people who will shout until they are blue in the face that X is not really bigoted. Here is a good example:
http://roguecartoonist.blogspot.com/2017/07/
If anyone paid attention to Trump’s career, they will see it marked with incidences of racism. Trump came to the public eye in the 1970s when the Nixon admin sued his dad for refusing to rent to Black people. He called for the lynching of the Central Park 5 (falsely accused it turned out and later exonerated). He launched early unto the birther thing and seemed enraged when Obama casually dismissed him at the White House Correspondence dinner. My grand theory of Trump is that Obama’s cool attitude enraged him so that he needed revenge. His early push in the primaries was built on bashing declining illegal immigration (build the wall) and Muslim-bashing.
Yet despite all this, it is still considered beyond the pail here by many to discuss that white resentment and/or racism played a role in Trump zooming through the GOP primary and electoral college success. This is because people either don’t want to confront their own bigotries and/or they don’t want to confront the bigotries of their friends and relatives who voted for Trump.
I think their is a comforting lie in saying that a Bernie style candidate could have beaten Trump in the general election because it makes it about economics and economics are easy to make policies out of. Countering racism and bigotry is hard and might ultimately lead to a situation where you can’t say “But if you did this” to the opposition.Report
Liberals seem to ignore the fact that Trump opened his golf club to blacks and jews. How convenient.Report
I doubt anyone who comments here would deny that some flavor of white identity politics “played a role”, though there’s disagreement about how significant that role was, vis-à-vis other causes; or that Trump played to those concerns, to his own benefit. But the article you linked stated boldly that “White resentment put Donald Trump in the White House”, as if that were the only cause and there was no other reason to vote for Trump, and no argument was needed to defend the proposition. Then she goes on to suggest that a whole list of other policy positions are due only to white resentment.
If that’s the story you want to tell, you can make a plausible case for it — especially plausible to people who believe that “Republicans are racist” is correct to a first approximation. But there are other plausible cases that can be made as well, including some that aren’t nearly as comforting to you as believing that your ideological opponents are irrational and have only base motivations for their contrary beliefs.Report
Saul: “My grand theory of Trump is that Obama’s cool attitude enraged him so that he needed revenge”
That’s not just you – it’s the frontispiece of at least one Frontline docu. that explains Trump’s rise. It was something akin to an affront to .. honor … or something. Obama’s harangue was fairy lengthy. Trump’s a military school guy. It could be as simple *as* some retro 19th century sense of honor.
Bluntly, if it really is *just racism*. then it will extend well beyond my lifespan and we’ve simply lost. I think that a collective diagnosis of “just racism” is therefore somewhat dangerous.Report
@les-cargill
His high school barely counts as a military school and there is evidence that Trump is just a vindictive person. Richard Branson had the anecdote about how Trump invited him to lunch and spent the entire time talking about how he was going to get revenge on five specific people who refused to give him money.
It isn’t just racism but there is political payoff in making whites feel like a minority
Did Trump promise to drain the swamp? Sure. Did he? Hell no. Who still believes Trump will? Enough people apparently. Trump also encouraged police brutality when speaking to police officers (which the departments said they would not tolerate thankfully).
I don’t think it is all racism but I do think there is a tendency to downplay racism, bigotry, and xenophobia because those are tougher issues to deal with. I’ve seen a lot of “My friends voted for Trump and they are not racist.” This can be anecdote is not data or denial about an aspect of your friends that you (general you) don’t want to deal with or acknowledge.Report
This strikes me as one of those things that is both true and unhelpful. Racism is many more things than overt actions and outright bigotry. The same is true for sexism. Most people don’t like being called racist or sexist though because most people don’t like being seen as evil. Referring to something or someone as racist can often be used to stop counter-arguments in their track. Its an annoying difficult situation to deal with.Report
I’ll support affirmative action when Chelsea Clinton’s of the world stop benefiting from nepotism why should the proles sacrifice when the elites refuse to do so. This is how race has been dealt with since the civil war draft elite whites expect white proles to sacrifice for the benefit blacks while refusing to make any themselves.
Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and the author of “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.”
other words an elite college professor wants to rationalize the the contempt they she hold and convinces herself I’m racist in order to do so. Why is it it so hard to believe that I hate hipsters and yuppies?Report
Speaking of affirmative action babies, Jared Kushner had neither the grades nor the test scores to get into Harvard but his Daddy donated a cool couple million to the school and–voila–he got in. If conservatives oppose affirmative action because it’s not fair, than shouldn’t they also oppose buying your unqualified kid a place in Ivy League for the same reasons?Report
Chris Arnade had a couple of good tweets about this over the weekend.
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Who is the “we” that gives Harvard status? There are plenty of veeerrrry exclusive schools that most people haven’t heard of so they have less status so it isn’t just being exclusive. But there isn’t a “we” doing any status awarding.
To stretch out the point, “we” or “society” is a common thing to blame and is almost always lazy. SJW’s do this all the time btw. It diffuses responsibility to broadly and doesn’t account for all the many differences of how we individually experience “society.”Report
Therefore we shouldn’t think that going to Harvard awards some amount of status?Report
Harvard awards degrees. Status is what social animals give things. But there isn’t a “we” doing it. Some people hate hate hate Harvard….did Harvard award that? “We” is lazy, it doesn’t mean anything in this context. Harvard markets themselves, for sure, but then again so did Pets.com. There is no giant societal “we” doing things.Report
Therefore we shouldn’t think that going to Harvard awards some amount of status?Report
I repeat the question because: dude, it *DOES*.
And arguing that it shouldn’t against someone who is saying “maybe we should question whether it should” as if you were arguing against the point they were making is…
I don’t even know what it is.Report
The “we” in ‘ we give it status is a lazy abstraction. Harvard awards degrees. They try to build their status but so do lots of things. Who gives it status? Not “we.”Report
“How can America be ‘racist’? America is a country!”Report
Racism has a long history in America. Racism has seriously affected America. Race has had a preeminent effect on American policy and the course of our history.
No we involved. But we didn’t do any of that. Lot’s of the people during all that history were not making it happen.
Arande does have some points. But “we” is lazy and avoids a lot of issues that is easier to elide. And there is plenty of stuff Arande wants to avoid.Report
And yet Harvard awards status.
This is something that happens.
You’re not even denying that this happens.
You’re just playing games with “well, who does ‘we’ refer to?” rather than acknowledging that, yes, Harvard awards disproportionate status.Report
FSM Jay. Harvard awards degrees. They try to burnish their status but so do many places. There is no “we” here. “We” don’t give Harvard status because the “we” is a meaningless abstraction. It’s like the “we” elected Trump. The people who give Harvard high status give it high status. Most of the people who do that are other Harvard or Ivy grads. Plenty of people don’t care about Harvard or think much about it all. Heck that is probably most people.Report
Most of the people who do that are other Harvard or Ivy grads.
Huh.
Do go on.
Are these people disproportionately powerful, would you say?
Would they have a disproportionate amount of social capital?Report
You know who else is powerful and tries to improve his reputation? Well this person had a University ( though no football team). Trump U baby. Which means of course “We” think Trump wasn’t a scam but the greatest thing ever.Report
So… therefore we shouldn’t think that going to Harvard awards some amount of status?
Open your eyes and see it.
Compare to going to Compass Directional State.
Compare to going to Geological Formation Community College.
Compare to getting a GED.
This is something that happens.
Seriously.Report
But how do “we” do that? “We” don’t. Of course it has status, i’ve never said it didn’t. But lots of things do. There is no “we’ involved though. Someone who can slice an argument in so many ways should be able to see the lazy meaning of the term. You could show me how “we” do this which would clarify everything.Report
You could show me how “we” do this which would clarify everything.
It’s hiding in your acknowledgement here:
You know how it has status?
That’s how.Report
@gregiank
I’m going to split the difference between you and Jay.
I think you might be technically right that graduates of elite colleges and universities give status largely to themselves but that status comes with a lot of perks that graduates of just as fine but less elite universities have.
Ivy-leaguers tend to have better access, if not exclusive access, to the brass ring jobs that offer six-figure salaries at entry level. Now a lot of people don’t want these jobs but in the age of rocketing student debt, these jobs offer the best way to pay off the debt quickly. They also have access to the positions of power more easily. You need to graduate from Harvard, Yale, or Stanford law schools to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Many of our politicians went to the elite schools as well including on the right-side of the aisle despite the howls of liberal-bias (I’m looking at you Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton).
I suspect if a Yale Law grad got terminated, they would find a new gig easier than a University of Connecticut law grad, etc.
Now my solution to ending the ways these universities are elite is probably very different than Dan D’s or Jaybirds or Pinky.Report
Of course those places have status. Has anybody said they didn’t? Not I. It’s the silly “we” stuff that elides more then it illuminates. Like i said way up above SJW’s do this all the time and there was also the common refrain about how “we” all led to Trump being elected.
There will always be some school that is considered elite in some way. It could be MIT or Caltech for specialist reasons. It could be for being a great party school. My niece and her husband are both proud U of Florida grads. They are adorable in their pride in their teams but also noting every possible school ranking and where UF stands. They also dont’ seem to take it too seriously which makes it cuter.Report
But that status Harvard awards can be almost entirely yours just by hitting The Harvard Shop. Get a window sticker for your car, a hat, and a couple of sweatshirts and people will think you’re a Harvard man.Report
Unpossible. That must be a fake site. We all know all the lefties there hate capitalism.Report
It’s the Cabbage Patch Kid theory of education/status.
(I am old enough to remember the fights over those when they first came out)
I dunno, as someone in STEM who’s been asked either “who was your major professor” or “Where have you published” well before “where did you do your degree,” I suspect the status thing is highly career-dependent and my only apply to a certain subset of law/business/politics people.Report
Sneeches with stars.
Sneeches without.Report
Yeah, kinda.
But I also know that if I pasted a star on my belly, the star-bellied ones would still know I was an impostor because I can’t talk that talk.Report
I love this argument the elites benefit from legacy admissions therefor slots proles need sacrifice the few remaining slots. legacy admissions are the main reason I oppose affirmative action the it means the sacrifice is not being equally shared,Report
I support any rich minority that wants to donate enough money to get their kid into Harvard.Report
But i don’t support choosing people based on their race. That’s racism.Report
Wait… “Kid” Rock not “The” Rock? I’m so confused as to who my next celebrity overlord will be. Or are you just being silly?Report
There are a handful of things I noticed when I first saw that Kid Rock might have been running for the Senate (all the way back in July).
The first was that he’d be running against Debbie Stabenow (D) in 2018.
That his official Kid Rock for Senate webpage contains a cycling .jpg that includes the catchphrase “Pimp of the Nation”.
That he said this in this part of his news announcement on his non-political Kid Rock webpage:
(And, a little underneath that was a .jpeg of an empty gas tank underneath that says that it’s a rhymes-with-duck tank.)
Somewhere in there I saw this tweet here from Michael B Dougherty (of the National Review):
His tweet contains a link to a tweet from Kid Rock that contains a .jpg that says:
And then I watched his new music video “Po-Dunk”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KnAzpi4avo
If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it. Well, it’s not safe for work. There are a lot of words that rhyme-with-duck in it. Well, one in particular… but he says it a lot.
Seeing all of those things in, more or less, the same three or four days got me to think “Holy Crap. Kid Rock could take that Senate seat away from Stabenow.”
As it turns out, he’s only rocking the vote and getting people to register to vote at his concerts.
For now.Report
edit: oops… misread duck for dunk somehow.
Though I’m probably still not the target audience for the demotic verse of Kid Rock.
https://youtu.be/JQ_R8QBeYvs?t=27sReport
Who is and who ain’t the target audience is probably the root of the issue.
Who is the target audience of the Senate?Report
Well, you know that I’ve long posited the re-alignment theory before it was fashionable… so yes, I get the audience…I’m just not sure I get Kid Rock.Report
You know how buying a lottery ticket makes you feel rich for a minute or two?
You know how voting makes you feel like you’re represented by the political process for a minute or two?
Well, Bawitdaba can make you feel like a badass for a minute or two.Report
So a sort of white hip-hop/gangsta rap without (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) their lyrical charms?
Honest question to which I have no earthly idea… would Tupac (may he rest in peace) have gotten as many votes as Obama or either Clinton? In general or among African-Americans specifically?
At some point, even realignments are still coalitions… when I go into the local establishments of my 70% Trump county, you’re going to hear Blake Shelton, not Kid Rock.
But sure, if the Democrats/Republicans can’t come up with a Blake Shelton, then maybe Kid Rock is just the guy to take advantage of the changing landscape. Are we voting yet?Report
A world where going to church on Sunday but really, really hung over is seen as the better of the two alternatives available.Report
Well, I’m sure I’ve sat next to worse on any given Sunday… or so were thinking the folks next me.Report
I laughed at the idea of Stuart Smalley getting elected.
I laughed at the idea of Donald Trump getting elected.
I’m not laughing at the idea of Kid Rock getting elected.Report
But can Robert Ritchie (his legal name) get elected? How many states allow you to put a stage name on the ballot?Report
Back in 2004, Douglas “Dayhorse” Campbell ran for something or other in Colorado (Constitution Party! WOOOOOO) and I only remember because, on the ballot, that’s how they had his name.
Douglas “Dayhorse” Campbell. Quotes and everything.
It wouldn’t strike me as inconceivable that Robert “Kid Rock” Ritchie be on the ballot.Report
Was he related to Ben Nighthorse Cambell? (Who was both a Democratic and Republican US Senator from Colorado)Report
I don’t know?
My assumption all these years was that he wasn’t, but merely lucked into having the same last name and decided that he’d fabricate some coattails to ride on.
(And my googling shows me that one of Doug’s taglines was “there’s a difference between night and day!” which tells me “Yeah. No. This guy wasn’t even *CLOSE* to being related to Ben.”)Report
Michael,
You can change your legal name.Report
Indeed you can. I’ll believe he’s serious when I see one of (a) a Robert Ritchie for Senate web site or (b) a lawsuit to settle that he can put a stage name as well as a legal name on the ballot (a la @jaybird ‘s comment) or (c) reports about the long, tedious process of changing from Robert Ritchie to Kid Rock in the extensive paper trail of business/contract arrangements and assault convictions.Report
‘Alive’ is not a necessary condition to win a US Senate election.Report
By golly, I think you might just have invented slate voting in America… just run Ronald Reagan and FDR in every senate race, and let the parties sort out the slate.Report
The only reason NC Governor Pat McCrory didn’t posthumously arrest Christine Jorgensen for violating the provisions of the Bathroom Bill was that it’s hard to do that for ashes scattered in the Pacific.Report
LOL. Thank goodness he’s now former governor McCrory.Report
I dig the piece. And I get that it is exaggerated for the purposes of satire, but I do want to push back slightly against this bit here. When was the last time you heard any politician ramble on about debt ratios? I went to Stabenow’s web site and cannot find any mention of debt sustainability. Although, student loan debt seems to be one of her signature issues.
When we are thinking about how we got here, I think it is important to acknowledge that there is/was no point at which we made a clear crossover from purely reasoned and informed consideration of policy issues to the circus of politics as raw expression of the human id. When I watched the debates last year, I kept waiting for HRC to put the policy chops that I know she has on display and make Trump look out of his depth. That never happened. Instead, her strategy was to paint Trump as dangerous and ill-suited for the office, his supporters as the wrong kind of white people, and to try to stake out some sort of populist-lite position that triangulated the space between centrist Democrats, Bernie Bros and those on the edge of falling towards Trump.
Our politics has long been sliding towards being less and less about policy and more and more about identity-based status games. Trump and Kid Rock and whoever comes next are taking advantage of an already flailing system.Report
I’d consider Oprah’s endorsement of Obama as noteworthy. Whether it marked an increase in the speed of our slide or it revealed how far we’d already slid is debatable.Report
That was not what I was thinking about at all.Report