Michael Moore appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word, talking with Ali Velshi about his post-election views and on thoughts on how to win the Senate and the White House in 2020.
He was certainly much more upbeat, positive and sanguine last night, compared to other times before in the past year, when he appeared dejected and fearful of the future. He talked less about trump and more about Democrats and strategies for 2020.
Here are a some highlights of the interview -
- Apply the lessons learnt in this election to 2020.
- Democratic candidates who stayed near the center generally lost; those who were more liberal (generally) won.
- The key to winning 2020 is turnout and the one of the keys to turnout is ballot measures. Marijuana legalization ballot measures in MI energized young voters and and anti-gerrymandering ballot measures brought many other voters to the poll booths. Republicans successfully used the same tactic in previous elections with ballot measures against gay marriage.
- Add ballot measures in 2020 for marijuana legalization, outlawing of gerrymandering, free college, and equal rights amendment; and start talking about them tomorrow morning.
- Don’t shun your conservative brother-in-law this Thanksgiving; seat him at the main table and talk to him; be generous and kind in our victory; explain that the things we will push for will benefit him too.
- His advise to the Democratic leadership — the country (demographics) has changed. Come along with the change. Don’t hold back. Be bold. Don’t think we can have half health care. We need full Universal health care.
- On trump’s silly tweet on global warming — trump is for anything that benefits the wealthy. To your conservative brother-in-law, explain how we will help fix climate change and how it will benefit him. It will not just benefit “our people”, it will benefit everyone — your house will not go down in a mud slide, your house won’t go under water, ...
- Let’s learn from our neighbor Canada; about health care (they spent half of what we do with much better results) and about why there are so few mass shootings in spite of 7 million registered guns. We are a strong and confident enough nation to learn from others.
- On building bridges to conservatives — you can’t build bridges to racists and misogynists; they have to be shunned, like we treated smokers 20 years ago. To others, we can explain to them our vision, how it will benefit them and ask them to give us a chance in 2020.
Note that my quick paraphrasing of the interview is definitely not fully accurate; do see the video to get a more accurate and complete picture.
More from Moore
Epilogue
This is by no means an exhaustive list of strategies for winning 2020.
What do you think about these suggestions? What are your thoughts on what we should start doing tomorrow to win in 2020 and to right the ship of this nation? How can we keep the momentum going, given that trump and Republicans will continue to deceive, distract and disenfranchise the electorate (as explained by Paul Krugman) every day until 2020 and beyond?
Happy Thanksgiving.