The analysis here, like the analysis everywhere saying take Kid Rock seriously is essentially this. Donald Trump, despite all his buffoonery, sexism, and repeated decades-long demonstration that he says and the Sphinx really really nasty offensive things, still beat a mainstream well-known Democratic woman in a traditionally Democratic state. Therefore Anything is Possible.
Which I suppose is true. After all then, could simply be hit by a meteor crashing to Earth which is after all technically possible. And the governor could appoint Kid Rock as the interim senator who would then run as an incumbent. It's still possible after all.
Or, Trump's win against Clinton who is a skin of the teeth fluke which most Blue Collar voters are feeling pretty betrayed about Trump stabbing them in the back for typical billionaire policies, Plus even Trump was a better candidate than Kid Rock because the former could at least point two decades worth of a ledge business success and say he would run dysfunctional Washington like a business and make it work. Kid Rock may have made tens of millions by marketing mostly crappy music, but voters aren't going to give him the same benefit of Doubt of well he's made money so he in business so he knows how to run things
This is what you and many, many others are and have been missing since '14: people don't vote for people because of their experiences anymore. They vote for people like Kid Rock (who I don't think will win anyway though it'd be fatal for to count him out) because he says what they think. If you read any of my Trump posts, especially my 2011-2012 posts when I hated him far more than you do now, you'd see that I have always thought running the country "like a business" is retarded. Mitt Romney ran
on that exact same platform, perhaps even more so, whereas Trump sort of just stuck to "I'm independent" and "I'm with/for you."
If Kid Rock just runs on the basic premise of bread and butter retail politics, he'll have a chance. His persona though, as you noted, is harder to take seriously compared to Trump. But if he basically runs as a Michigander who is living the American dream, and then contrast himself to a potentially out of touch Stabenow, he very well might pull it off. If Stabenow takes him seriously, it would show that she is indeed in touch with her constituents and isn't drunk off the arrogance of power. Debbie Stabenow is no Hillary Clinton (certainly an establishment Senator, but without Clinton's many pitfalls) she should pull this off.
Eric Bolling is the only other "celebrity" candidate for federal office who I could see winning, because he, like Trump, literally explains his political maneuvering to the public as he does it. He won't face carpetbagging allegations if he comes to Florida and runs, for example, because he has made it clear that he
is carpetbagging. Brutal honesty is a new tool in the political arena (at least I've never seen it deployed so much, so effectively) and it can make otherwise long shot candidates very successful.
Other celebrity candidates like Zuckerberg, Jenner are just too far out to ever actually win any office. But then again, so was The Governator. So who knows?