Kanye West 2020

[Figueira]

Lol, I would love to see this. Trump would be guaranteed at least 40 states.

There would be no Democratic states, except maybe Hawaii. Vermont would probably go third party.

Come on. At least 10 states would vote for ANYONE with a D next to their name. No way he loses California, Washington or Maryland, for example.

If Republicans can win Maryland by 5 points in a midterm year, they can win it in a Presidential against Kanye ing West. The premise of this is that he wins the primaries with black identity politics. America will be voting like MS & AL if this happened.

If Democrats can win Wyoming by 40 points in a midterm year, they can win it in a Presidential year against Donald ing Trump. The premise of this is that he wins the primaries with white working class identity politics. America will be voting like MA & VT if this happened.

[Figueira]

Anyway, I don't think West can win the primary or the general solely because of "black identity politics." He'd have to win other demographics as well.

[Figueira]

My worry about Kanye West isn't so much that he would be unelectable as that he would just be a terrible President.

[Figueira]

Hawaii tends to be pro-incumbent so I could see them voting for Trump in a pure Trumpslide, but I don't expect that to happen. Counting out West is making the same mistake a lot of Democrats did this year.

[Figueira]

Also the Democratic primary rules are much different from the Republican ones. Which is why Trump isn't really a fitting precedent.

Trump won 100% of the delegates in South Carolina with less than 33% of the vote. He won a majority of the delegates in most Super Tuesday states despite not winning a majority in any.

That can't happen under the Democratic rules, and then throw in superdelegates.

It's possible that he'll win the pledged delegates by such a wide margin (say, West 35% Gillibrand 16% Klobuchar 14% Booker 13% S. Brown 12% K. Brown 5%) that superdelegates will hand the nomination to him out of fear of alienating his supporters. It's worth noting that the superdelegates haven't actually gone against the pledged delegate winner yet in their history.