Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore may be viewed as a crackpot by a large swath of Americans, but it can’t be ignored that he was one of the few people who accurately predicted Donald Trump‘s presidential election win in 2016.
At the very least, Moore deserves some respect for that, and perhaps a bent ear for his latest prediction: he says that Donald Trump will be re-elected in 2020 unless certain changes are made.
Speaking to Fast Company, Moore carefully selected his words, replacing “re-elected” with “re-appointed.”
“I should say re-appointed, because we will have an even larger population that will vote against him in 2020,” Moore said. “But he will win those electoral states as it stands now.”
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Moore is referring to the electoral process in the U.S., and in particular to 2016’s election, which saw Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton win the popular vote by nearly three million, but lose the electoral college vote — and thus the election — by 77,000 votes. The states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin ultimately gave Trump the win.
Though Moore, 63, believes that the electoral college isn’t going to change any time soon, he claims he’s working hard to increase activism and voter awareness of the issues to prevent a Trump re-election. (His Broadway play, The Terms of My Surrender, is tangible evidence of his attempt to double down on Trump.)
“Here’s the good news: We don’t have to convince a single Trump voter to vote differently because we already have the majority,” he said, meaning the popular vote tally.
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He thinks that all Trump opponents (and voters) need to rally behind the most qualified candidate once the election rolls around.
“Eight million Obama voters voted for Trump,” he said. “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. You know, there were seven-and-a-half million that voted Green or Libertarian. We don’t need to convince a whole lot here, but we do have to do some work to bring in people who would be sympathetic. Maybe they were justifiably upset, angry, and hurt and whatever, and we get that. But now they’ve seen how dangerous it is to have him as president of the United States.”
He also pointed out the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPVIC), an as-yet-unpassed initiative, which is an agreement among a group of states to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. Only 10 states and Washington, D.C. have signed on to this agreement, and it won’t be enacted until states that can deliver 270 electoral votes have passed it. There’s still a long way to go before NPVIC is approved, but that doesn’t deter Moore.
“That’ll be an easier way to get this done,” Moore said. “People should not despair, thinking… well, the Republicans have all this power and all that. Think of the suffragettes. They were trying to get the vote for women. They got… in 35 states to give women the right to vote. Think of that uphill battle.”
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Despite his prediction, Moore is heartened by the apparently changing demographics and ideologies in the U.S.
“Here’s another positive thing to look at: Every year three million 18-year-olds become adults and voters, and we raised those kids,” Moore said. “We’ve raised a generation of kids who don’t hate people on the basis of race, or they don’t hate somebody because they’re in love with somebody of the same gender. Nearly 70 per cent of the country is either female, people of colour, or young adults between 18 and 35, or a combination of the three. The angry white guy is dying out, and the Census Bureau has already told us that by 2050, white people are going to be the minority, and I’m not sad to say I can’t wait for that day to happen. I hope I live long enough to see it because it will be a better country.”
Other reports seem to support Moore’s 2020 victory prediction, including Trump’s own campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who released survey results Wednesday night showing Trump receiving at least 50 per cent of a hypothetical Republican Primary vote if it were to be held today.
Despite record-low approval ratings from U.S. citizens, for now the numbers appear to support Trump’s many declarations that he’ll be serving an eight-year term in office.
The Terms of My Surrender runs for 12 weeks at New York City’s Belasco Theatre.
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