Renowned documentarian Michael Moore has a new plan that he thinks will help the Democratic Party defeat Donald Trump in next year’s election — and cannabis reform will play an important role in this strategy.
In a recent interview with Seth Meyers, Moore expressed his hopes that the Democratic Party can nominate a candidate who will be able to solidly defeat Trump in 2020. “We all have to agree we’re all gonna vote for the person that isn’t just gonna beat Trump, ’cause I think there’s four or five candidates now that could beat him,” Moore said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Beating him isn’t good enough. Hillary beat him… We have to crush Trump. It has to be orange crush. Operation Orange Crush.”
“We have to do some things to make sure we have the right candidate,” Moore said. “We have to have a beloved American running, not a professional politician. If you put up a professional politician against Trump, you got to have somebody who’s gonna inspire the base.”
The filmmaker noted that women, people of color, and young adults between the ages of 18 to 35 make up “70 percent of who’s gonna vote next year,” and contends that the Democrats nominate a “street fighter” candidate who will appeal to this demographic.
But even if the Democrats do manage to nominate someone who can inspire national support in the way that Obama did in 2008, the party still needs to convince liberal voters to show up to the polls. Moore believes that Democrats should look to Michigan as an example of how to do this. In 2016, the Wolverine State voted for Trump, but last year, an adult-use ballot measure drew a record number of young voters to the polls. In addition to legalizing weed, these young voters also flipped the state back to blue.
“Let me tell you how we did it,” Moore said. “Ballot proposals brought out the people to vote last November who may not have voted… We did it in Michigan with marijuana legalization — we doubled the youth vote from the previous off-year election.”
Numerous polls show that a strong majority of Americans are in favor of cannabis reform, and the success of adult-use ballot measures in Michigan, California, and other states demonstrate that cannabis reform is an issue that will bring voters to the polls.
Interestingly, the ballot measure idea was actually originated by the GOP. Moore explained that the idea came from Karl Rove and George W. Bush, who convinced 14 red states to place initiatives to ban gay marriage on their 2004 election ballots. These measures brought a record number of conservative voters out of the woodwork, cementing Bush’s victory over John Kerry.
This year, Moore recommends that Democrats leverage the Republicans’ strategy against them: by using cannabis legalization initiatives and other progressive ballot measures to ensure that Operation Orange Crush is a resounding success.
