Dear Michael Moore,
You are wrong when you blamed the Joe Blows for getting Donald Trump elected. In fact, the election results show that fewer Republicans voted for Trump than the ones who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. But even fewer voted for Hillary Clinton. Instead, they either voted for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or didn't vote at all.
Please take a look at the following table with data from the 2012 presidential election on the left, and data from the 2016 presidencial election on the right. The 2016 data is the latest available data from RealClearPolitics.com and The New York Times at the moment of writing this article, at 5:31 PM, Central time, on Wednesday, November 9, 2016.
There are some very clear points that must be made from this data if Trump is to last only one term in office. Here they are:
1. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. At least until now, the available numbers show Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 0.2%. Not much, and it doesn't matter because the electoral vote is the one that counts, but it's important to show it.
2. Both, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had fewer votes than Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012. This VERY important to point out because it shows it is a MYTH that Donald Trump got the support of the American people. That is simply not the case. The American voter did not changed its mind and supported Trump. If anything, they withdrew support from the Republican ticket. So no, this election didn't turn Americans into fascists and racists. If anything, the results show that fewer people fell for that discourse of hate.
3. Having said that, Hillary Clinton lost more votes relative to Obama's 2012 results than Trump relative to Romney's results. Overall, Hillary Clinton lost 10% of the Democratic vote from 2012, while Trump only lost 2% of the Republican vote from 2012. For Clinton, that is a loss of over 6.11 million votes, while for Trump that is a loss of 1.34 million votes. Where did those voters go? They went to Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or they didn't vote at all.
4. In 2012, Gary Johnson had 1.27 million votes or 0.99% of the vote. But in 2016 his vote more than doubled to 4.01 million votes or 3.2% of the vote. That is, a 2.73 million increase in Johnson's vote. Assuming all of the defecting Republicans went to Johnson, that leaves about 1.4 million Democrat votes that went to Johnson.
5. Jill Stein had 0.46 million votes in 2012 or 0.36% of the vote. In 2016, Stein had 1.25 million votes or 1% of the vote. That is, an increase of 0.78 million votes in 2016. Added to the 1.4 million increase in Democrat votes for Gary Johnson, that's a total of 2.18 million votes that otherwise would've gone to Hillary Clinton.
6. Additionally, there were 3.68 million people who just plain didn't vote. Considering Clinton lost 6.1 million votes relative to Obama's 2012 results, those 3.68 votes are likely to be mostly Democrat votes.
7. The same is true for the electoral college. Hillary Clinton lost Florida and Wisconsin because of the votes for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Had those votes gone to Clinton, Clinton would've won the election.
We can conclude the following from this data:
1. The real problem for Democrats in this election was not the Whites without a college education. It wasn't the angry White men either. The real problem was Democrats staying at home and Democrats defecting to third party candidates. Trump didn't even win the popular vote. In fact, he had FEWER votes than Mitt Romney.
2. About 2.18 million people who otherwise would've voted Democrat, defected and voted for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. My suspicion is many Millennials were among those defecting. In doing so, they gave Trump the presidency.
3. HOWEVER, even with the defectors, had 3.68 million voters who didn't even bother to vote in this election gotten to the polls and voted, Hillary Clinton would've won.
4. Even though she won the popular vote, Hillary Clinton was not effective candidate, as her candidacy had a hemorrhage of over 6 million voters that didn't go to Donald Trump, but to third party candidates, or just plain didn't bother to vote.
5. The Democratic Party was dead wrong when they thought they needed a moderate ticket. The results show they needed the exact opposite, and a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket would've been the right choice in order to keep voters from defecting to third party candidates or from staying at home. You, Mike, predicted this. And unlike your prediction about the Joe Blows voting for Trump, this prediction did come true.
6. In order to make sure Trump only stays in power for 4 years, the Democrats must start building a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket NOW. The Democrats should skip the primaries altogether and just give Sanders and Warren the ticket. If they want to make it even more attractive, they can add Corey Booker as Secretary of State. They must do this NOW because in 2018 the Sanders/Warren ticket can be the key to taking control of Congress twice.
7. Unfortunately, Michelle Obama must not run. Not now. Perhaps in 2024. Ar at least until voters understand the mistake they made in 2016 by voting for Johnson and Stein. And that's going to take time.
8. Finally, progressives MUST inform voters why was a BIG mistake to vote for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. They wasted their vote on a tantrum. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of people pointing to that fact. Most of the rhetoric I see is about how could Americans give in to Trump's hate speech. Well, they didn't. There was no increment in Republican votes, but a dicrease. If Trump won was because there was an even larger decrease in Democrat votes that went to Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or didn't vote. Until progressives understand why we're wasting time in critizing America for turning "orange" (it wasn't the case, as the numbers show) and focus on bringing back people from third party options, the Republicans will keep on winning even though they have less votes every time.
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