People always worry about joke candidates getting enough votes to actually gain a seat, but how often does this actually occur?

Back in The 90ies a danish comedians PR stunt of an pretend campaing based on absurd promises led to him bring elected to parliament as an independent. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Conscientiously_Wor...

And that’s was an actual joke candidate who newer took the campaign seriously, an serious candidacy from a known celebrity have a high cance of success at a time when the establishment looks incompetent and corrupt.

Well, at least once, recently

I’m assuming you mean Trump?

If so, you’re doing yourself a disservice by dismissing him as a joke. I hate the guy as much as anyone but he does deserve some credit.

He saw the way he could win when everyone else thought he was a joke. By the time anyone realized he was going to win it was way too late.

Perhaps he wasn't prescient, just lucky.

If the Democrats think like that Trump’ll win again in 2020.

He's not saying Trump is just a joke now, I think. But Trump really did start off as a mostly joke candidate- wouldn't it be funny? Can you imagine? Etc. And then he used his racism and psychopathic tendencies to win the race.

And Mr. Paul here has both.