Michael Moore Predicts Donald Trump Will Be Reelected

Michael Moore, who is currently doing a one man show to take on Donald Trump, is getting a lot of coverage today for predicting that Donald Trump will be reelected in 2020. His prediction is carrying some weight primarily because he had predicted that Trump would win in 2016 based upon winning in the upper midwest. Moore predicts that “he will win those electoral states as it stands now.”

It is of course way to early to predict the 2020 election. It is far from certain he will be able to win the midwest if he is unable keep the promises he kept, and not even certain he won’t be impeached before then.

Moore was basing his argument upon winning those states and the electoral college, calling it being re-appointed as opposed to reelected. I wonder if his real point was to draw attention to opposition to the electoral college and pitching the National Popular Vote interstate compact as a way around the electoral vote.  This would create an agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote regardless of how their state voted.

Just as it is far from certain that Donald Trump can win the same states he won in 2016, it is also not certain that Clinton would have won if the vote was based upon the popular vote in 2016. Trump based his strategy on the electoral college, concentrating his campaign on those states which could (and ultimately did) provide an electoral college majority. In contrast, Clinton tried more to run up the popular vote, and ignored crucial states in the electoral college.

If the 2016 election was based upon the popular vote, Trump would have used a completely different strategy, primarily involving campaigning in populous blue states which he ignored because they were worthless in the electoral college. While he could never win in New York and California, he could have pulled in significantly more votes than he did by campaigning there, and in other blue states he ignored. He also might have run up the vote more in more in Texas and other red states to increase his popular vote total.

Beyond changing to winning by the popular vote, Moore concentrated his strategy on getting back Obama voters who voted for Trump and those who voted for third party candidates:

 “Eight million Obama voters voted for Trump. We just need to convince a few of them–hold out our hand and bring them back. Can we do that? I think we can do that,” Moore says. “You know, there were seven-and-a-half million that voted Green or Libertarian. I think we can convince a few of them to come back. We don’t need to convince a whole lot here.”

At least he didn’t repeat the bogus argument spread by Clinton supporters last week blaming supporters of Bernie Sanders for Clinton losing.

While it is possible that by 2020 Trump will be unelectable, at the moment I do not see very good signs that the Democrats are on the right track to win should Trump’s popularity improve. The way to beat Trump is not to primarily attack his faults (regardless of how bad they are). Hillary Clinton already tried this, and lost. The Democrats need to show that they stand for something and can offer something better, and not just a return to the old Bush/Clinton status quo. So far they are failing to do this.

6 Comments

  1. 1
    Jeffrey A Warme says:

    I would only vote Democrat if BERNIE is the candidate. Obama was the first Democrat that I ever voted for and did so twice but now know he was no different than the previous 4 presidents.

    BERNIE OR BUST 2020

  2. 2
    Kelly Bess says:

    So we got Trump !! STupid….Dangerous…..Fucked up!!….oh, and stupid!!!

  3. 3
    Peter Tobias says:

     Jeffrey, Bernie would have been a better president than Obama was, but Obama got something good done, too.  While I will support the candidate in the Democratic primary that I like best, I will, probably, support the Democrat in the general election, like Bernie did last time, because he or she will probably be better than the Republican candidate, and one the two candidates will win.  Bernie did the right thing to focus on the Democratic primary and not run in the general election.

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    We got Trump because of how terrible a choice the Democratic establishment made in picking their nominee.

  5. 5
    Melissa says:

    Anyone still carrying on about Bernie versus Hillary versus Trump – wake the hell up.  Hillary on her worst day is nowhere near the dangerous, corrupt, lunatic that Dump is.  Further – her actual policy proposals were impressive – if you bothered to look at them  .As for Obama – what the hell is wrong with you people?  He is no longer in office – we are now talking about the election in 2020.  Find a brain someplace and use it.

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    Her actual record is as dangerous as Trump’s, if you bother to look at it. This includes her wars and her far right record on First Amendment issues. It is also rather hypocritical to complain about Trump’s corruption while ignoring Clinton’s influence peddling. What makes Clinton potentially even more dangerous than Trump is that, while many are opposing Trump, Democrats who lack principles would back Clinton’s right wing policies and wars because she has a D after her name.

    If Trump was the Democratic candidate, I bet you would be making the same argument about him.

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