The Kanye West 2020 presidential campaign has already begun on Twitter
"Yeezus" has political ambitions, but he's not ready to run just yet. That hasn't stopped a "Kanye for president" bid for the highest office from kicking off on Twitter right away.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Kanye West is apparently up on the fact that US presidential campaigns have been starting earlier with each cycle, so he got the jump on other contenders by announcing his candidacy for the highest office in the land at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night...for the election in 2020.
West made the announcement at the end of a bizarre and rambling acceptance speech at the awards after being given the "Video Vanguard" award, a kind of lifetime achievement honor.
Bafflingly, the controversial rapper's declaration came moments after he also declared "I'm not no politician, bruh."
Many millennials -- the 38-year-old West declared himself one in his speech -- seem ready to mount a vigorous campaign for West. (His age, however, puts him pretty firmly in Gen X.) Or, if not a full-blown campaign, a whole lot of retweets and some pretty sweet memes.
The Twitter account for Beats By Dre, which itself is now "by Apple," helped kicked off a hashtag to get things started:
RT if you're voting for Kanye in 2020. #VoteForKanye
— Beats By Dre (@beatsbydre) August 31, 2015And then it was off to the races, starting with the predictable parody accounts:
#KanyeForPresident2020 pic.twitter.com/b5IKepkY2Z
— Vote For Kanye 2020 (@VoteForKanye) August 31, 2015Others offered a glimpse of the future of politics in America that is both awesome and terrifying:
#KANYE2020 has already led to countless hilarious memes http://t.co/XkHGg71z8w pic.twitter.com/aYrJx9nXOE
— Mic (@micnews) August 31, 2015Of course, Kanye actually has a few years to file his papers and kick off an actual presidential campaign, but he's already got a big head start on all the 2016 presidential candidates in one metric -- he's got almost three times more Twitter followers than any of of them, despite the fact that he only follows his wife, Kim Kardashian.
What West's followers might mean for an actual Kanye candidacy remains hard to say, but it seems he already has a good head start at claiming Trump's crown as the reigning king of the campaign meme generation.What do you think? Let us know in the comments if you'd consider supporting a Kanye West presidential run in 2016 or 2020. And more importantly, who would be his ideal running mate? Despite their likely ideological differences, a West/Eastwood ticket has a certain ring...
Updated on 9/3 to remove references to Donald Trump's reaction on Twitter, which was actually the product of a parody Twitter account.