Back in July, when a large swath of the country probably thought he was being alarmist, documentary filmmaker and progressive firebrand Michael Moore wrote an essay on his website entitled “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win.†The essay is particularly prescient after Donald Trump won the Electoral College (not, it should be pointed out, the popular vote), as he homes in on the Electoral College and what he calls “Our Rust Belt Brexit.†Moore writes, “I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rust belt of the upper Great Lakes — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.†He continues:
In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.
On election night, that’s exactly what happened as those four states, some of which were considered likely Clinton wins, voted for Trump. Additionally, Moore gets into some other reasons why he believes Trump would win, calling reason number two “The Last Stand of the Angry White Man,†which echoes CBC commentator Danielle Moodie-Mills’s comment that this election was “white supremacy’s last stand.â€
Some other factors that will (and did) contribute to a Trump victory that Moore discussed included the fact that there wasn’t a candidate to get excited around — meaning, yes, Hillary Clinton. He warned that there would be a “depressed vote†around Sanders supporters, meaning that the problem wasn’t that Sanders supporters wouldn’t actually vote for Clinton (well, except for Susan Sarandon), but that “the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her.†Moore adds that Clinton gave young, millennial voters nothing to get excited about by picking Tim Kaine as her running mate. “Having two women on the ticket — that was an exciting idea,†Moore writes. “But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.â€
Finally, in perhaps the most sobering and nihilist argument, Moore writes that there would be a “Jesse Ventura Effect†referring, of course, to the pro wrestler turned Minnesota governor. Moore writes, “Millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can.â€
You can read the entire essay here.