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5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win
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Friends:
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump
would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more
awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in
November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full
time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go
ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four
years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”
Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.
I can see what
you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly - “No, Mike,
this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes
with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced
the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You
alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of
his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on
everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to
Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the
world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will
continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this!
You need to
exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face
the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe
yourself with the facts - “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!“ - or logic - “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!“
- is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when
you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew
out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t
want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the
same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said
“a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade
Center.” We want to - we need to - hope for the best because, frankly,
life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by
from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our
mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly
happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their
final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had
simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the
curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!”
Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton
is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you
obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16
Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw
at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of
today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen - and in
order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then
maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.
Don’t get me wrong. I have great hope for the country I live in. Things are
better. The left has won the cultural wars. Gays and lesbians can get
married. A majority of Americans now take the liberal position on just
about every polling question posed to them: Equal pay for women - check.
Abortion should be legal - check. Stronger environmental laws - check.
More gun control - check. Legalize marijuana - check. A huge shift has
taken place - just ask the socialist who won 22 states this year. And
there is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch
at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide.
But that is not
how it works in America. People have to leave the house and get in line
to vote. And if they live in poor, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods,
they not only have a longer line to wait in, everything is being done to
literally stop them from casting a ballot. So in most elections it’s
hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the problem
for November - who is going to have the most motivated, most inspired
voters show up to vote? You know the answer to this question.
Who’s the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans
are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long,
all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every
Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and
Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot? That’s right. That’s the high level
of danger we’re in. And don’t fool yourself — no amount of compelling
Hillary TV ads, or outfacting him in the debates or Libertarians
siphoning votes away from Trump is going to stop his mojo.
“You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real.”
Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win:
1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.
I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four
blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes - Michigan, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states - but
each of them have elected a Republican governor since
2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the
Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the
Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is
ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her
in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has
said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the
Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of
the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her
support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the
people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford
Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation
that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that
factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any
Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet,
sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he
tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making
their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts
swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone
to the governor next-door, John Kasich.
From Green Bay
to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England - broken,
depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside
with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry,
embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the
trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a
good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a
lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before
leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen
here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says
whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is
their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American
Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house!
You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is
your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the
bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!
And this is
where the math comes in. 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.
2. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch!
There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender
traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school
should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly
commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this
year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists
raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the
humanity!
That’s a small
peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that
the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things
is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the
thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she
bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight
years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit
back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll
be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders!
You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted
human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country.
This has to stop!
3. The Hillary Problem. Can
we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me
state, I actually like Hillary - a lot - and I think she has been given a
bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me
promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t
broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from
becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly
believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military
action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger
will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.
Let’s face it:
Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump - it’s Hillary. She is hugely
unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and
dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing
in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights
against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a
gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has
to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and
other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation
would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they
should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like
her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t
voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up
on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they
did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary
ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is
going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of
the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird
seat.
4. The Depressed Sanders Vote.
Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton - we’re
voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will
vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in
‘08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm
that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will
drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for
Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” - meaning the voter
doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10
hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an
excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed
voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies
and BS. Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly
having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of
those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some
will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is
going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her —
and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her
running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that
their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket -
that was an exciting idea. 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.
5. The Jesse Ventura Effect.
Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or
underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists
once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s
one of the few places left in society where there are no security
cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops,
there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need
in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button
and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and
Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that
so many have toward a broken political system, 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. Just because it will
upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way
like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind
wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a
lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster
and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like.
Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a
professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because
they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman
or political intellectual. They did so just because they could.
Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also
filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for
Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political
system. This is going to happen again with Trump.
Coming back to
the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special
this week on HBO, a man stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote
for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up.” That was it. That was enough for
him. To “shake things up.” President Trump would indeed do just that,
and a good chunk of the electorate would like to sit in the bleachers
and watch that reality show.
(Next week I will post my thoughts on Trump’s Achilles Heel and how I think he can be beat.)
Yours,
Michael Moore
Michael Moore
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