Michael Moore’s take on the election:
I think he’s basically right.
Overkill is the only answer. It is not enough for Trump to lose-He has done that before. The Bastard has to lose bigly, and Trumpism itself has to lose bigly.
My right brain model says that Trump will lose solidly. I.e., Harris will win by a big enough margin in enough swing states that the fascists won’t really bother with election denial this time. I think we will retake the House and most likely keep the Senate.
Overkill is hard to engineer. But yes, I am wishing for as much overkill as possible.
Never underestimate lying, cheating and stealing.
That’s what I said a couple weeks ago. The MAGAts need to be kicked in the face good and hard (election-wise) this time around so even they will realize their shit don’t fly in this country.
That’s not gonna happen.
Oh, sweet, summer child. Anything short of an 80/20 vote percentage in favor of Trump and his taking every single EC vote will have them whinging about illegal aliens and truckloads of ballots from China. It’s baked into their souls.
Some will, no doubt. But the GOP likes winning even more than pissing and moaning, and they will see that it is not to their advantage to complain when they can do nothing. They aren’t going to launch a fuckton of lawsuits and other plots this time when they have seen the consequences from 2020: lawyers getting disbarred, operatives getting prosecuted, etc.
I strongly disagree. The GOP thrives in opposition. They don’t have any real ideas for policy or governance (other than “fuck it, make the rich richer,” and now lately “keep down the POCs”), but that doesn’t “play” with the electorate outside their base and they can’t make it their whole platform while actually governing. Instead, they like to sit on the sideline for a few years, complaining about “political correctness / wokeness / DEI / insert new buzzword here,” demonizing the Dems, and building up ill will that they can capitalize on. Then when the dam finally breaks, they get a brief orgy of destruction which alienates the electorate, and they get voted out again, at which point they return to the strategy of holding the line on that destruction until they get another turn. They are perfectly happy to spend that time in opposition because it’s extremely profitable for them, as individual party members.
What we are currently seeing is that they’re slavering hungrily at the prospect that this strategy will pay off with a final round of destruction and they’ll get to cement themselves as a permanent governing minority (I’ve compared them before to the Baathists). That’s the endgame. But if they don’t make it, they have their old playbook to whinge and natter from the sideline until they pull the pendulum back to themselves.
Sure, they’d love to be in charge forever, and are aiming to achieve just that. But their long-term goal and their established M.O. doesn’t require it every single time. The bastards have their eye on the ball and are capable of dropping back past midfield to regroup and make another go.
I wish he was right. But even the data that Moore cites doesn’t back him up; what he claims backs him up are some secret polls known only to insiders. WTF?
His own cited data says that “an aggregate of top polls as of today shows that Harris will defeat Trump in the Electoral College count by 270 to 268”. From what I saw of a CNN analysis last night, this is the result you get if you look at only the swing states, considering the rest of the states a done deal on one side or the other. But every single one of those swing states is polling within the margin of error! Some for Harris, some for Trump, all within the margin of error.
Unless one is blinded by wishful thinking, ISTM that this election is unpredictable, a genuine cliffhanger, with more at stake than ever before in living memory, or perhaps ever. A vengeful, psychotic and increasingly demented lunatic may become the next president, and the margin of hope that he may be defeated is tiny indeed.
I totally agree with all that you say here, and I’ve said very similar things myself. But two minor points of minor disagreement:
- Playing the minority obstructionist party is a good grift, but it’s somewhat of a delicate balancing act, since you have to win enough to play that role in the first place.
- Election denialism fit Trump’s playbook because he was not playing the above game; he really wanted to be Autocrat President Forever. Outside of the Trumpian context, it doesn’t have much of a role, and I don’t think the GOP will do it much post-Trump.
I think More is saying–well, he literally is saying that he talks to a bunch of insiders, and the conventional wisdom among them is that Trump is going to lose. And he is further saying that they have access to data that others do not.
I think it’s an interesting data point at least.
When I said I think he’s basically right, I meant that his overall description of how Harris will win and the scale of her win matches my own imagining of things at this point.
They control just over half of the governorships and well over half of the state-level legislatures. They are winning plenty where it counts, and that won’t change. Stretches where the Dems have the White House allow the GOP to pretend that they’re out of power but there is no plausible scenario where they actually lose enough power to endanger their oppositional posture.
In the link,Michael Moore says he has
" access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites"
This is a concept I’ve seen mentioned in every election–the “internal polls” which the elite know, but which are not released to the public.
And I don’t understand it. Why would an “internal” poll be more accurate than that regular polls by all the reputable and experienced agencies?
The only way to do a poll is to dial 15 thousand phone numbers, get 15 hundred people who are willing to answer, and then manipulate the data by logical guesswork, based on experience.
How can a secret,internal poll be more accurate than the professionals with decades of experience?
In the specific case of Trump, the only “insider secret” I can imagine isn’t an issue for polling: the secret might be that Trump has a medical problem which is not yet public knowledge. But if it is so secret that the voters don’t know about it, then it cannot affect they way they vote on Nov 5. So Trump still has a very, very, very good chance of winning.
I think Michael Moore is just projecting his own hopes onto the data. He states the usual stuff: that Trump is losing momentum, is unhinged, only knows how to rant about Hannibal Lecter, eating pets, etc…as if this is something new. Democrats have known it for months, and Republicans have ignored it for just as long. The result is a tie.
I can’t see any reason from Moore’s article to think that his prediction is any better than all the other pollsters.
Of course not.
But there are other ways to do polls. You can have panels that you follow, for example. And internal polling might be better funded.
It’s news because Moore’s projection in 2016 outperformed the pollsters. He was practically the only liberal who saw what was coming (for what that’s worth 8 years later.)
I remember watching him on Morning Joe the day after the election, and I feel like his correct predictions were more due to a better cultural read than a numerical one. He said, basically, there are a ton of people across the country who watched The Apprentice (and other reality junk) and not recognizing how much the victor that year had been a part of their households via the teevee was a massive blind spot for the media elites and pollsters. If he’s legitimately got more numbers to run with this year on top of his boots on the ground assessment, I’d say we should listen.
I also say this not being a particularly big fan of his, nor of Bill Maher, who was also an outlier in 2016 and said there was a really strong chance TFG would win.
That was logical back in 2016. The mainstream pundits just assumed that all the usual rules applied (i.e. voters are rational), while Moore had a better insight on popular culture, and knew that rules are only for cowards. Moore travelled a lot through “flyover country”, and in 2016 was in touch with a lot of people whom the pundits ignored, because of ivory towers and snobbery.
But in this current link, Moore is just copying the mainstream pundits, and not adding any new insights. He has no evidence. But he wants to believe that the old rules still apply (i.e voters are rational) , therefor Trump won’t win. To me , that sounds like the mistake due to ivory towers and snobbery, instead of a careful cultural read 44% of the population.
The usual disclaimer about investments should apply: " Past performance** is not indicative of future results."
In 2016 the Republican partisan pollsters outperformed the real polls.
Just sayin’
Off topic: If Milton hits central Florida (a somewhat red-leaning) region hard enough, it could dampen the Republican vote turnout there. There is no path for Trump to win if he can’t get Florida.
Trump is not going to win Florida.