Friday, January 22, 2016

Hillary Clinton Has a Killer Mike Problem

Killer Mike (left), US Senator Bernie Sanders, and Illinois State Representative La Shawn Ford at a press conference in Chicago on December 23, 2015. Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images

After the Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina last weekend, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was represented by none other than Killer Mike. While it's pretty standard for campaigns to send proxies in to wrangle reporters, those proxies usually don't include a a self-described "Pan-Africanist gangster rapper" who's released music with everyone from Andre 3000 to Zack de la Rocha and makes up one half of the acclaimed underground hip-hop duo Run the Jewels.

But Mike worked the room with the political pros, comparing his candidate to the Beastie Boys and Martin Luther King, Jr., and gamely humoring the political press corps by announcing he'd become a Sanders supporter while "smokin' a joint, reading his tweets."

There's no two ways about it—sending Killer Mike into the spin room made Bernie Sanders seem cool. Damn cool. It lined right up with the straight-shooting, no-fucks-given attitude that's characterized Sanders' unlikely White House bid, and helped the Democratic socialist surge ahead of Hillary Clinton in the latest Iowa and New Hampshire polls. And Mike isn't the only rapper who's lent his cred and cool to the Sanders campaign. As a recent New York Times piece noted, the Vermont Senator has also received endorsements from such artists as Big Boi, Bun B, and Lil B.

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