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Michael Moore On Tim Kaine: Progressives Will Stay Home

By Robert Jonathan
Published on: 02:45 PST, Jul 24, 2016

Don’t expect Michael Moore to climb aboard the Kaine train.

In a tweet, the liberal documentarian suggested that progressive-oriented voters may stay home on Election Day rather than vote for Hillary Clinton and her newly named vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine.

On his social media feed that has about 2.6 million followers, the Michigan native expressed skepticism that the Kaine pick will result even one more voter gravitating toward the Democrat ticket, and that the selection itself reflects stale political thinking. Moore also insisted that in contrast, the Mike Pence pick by Donald Trump excited the conservative voter base for the GOP.

Virginia Senator Kaine, who was formerly governor of the Old Dominion state, has a generally liberal voting record in the Senate in line with his colleagues, but appears to be closely aligned with the big banks, and only recently changed his position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from for to against.

In a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Moore — who is no Trump fan by any means — shocked the audience by predicting that Donald Trump would win the general election because of his appeal in the Rust Belt, essentially warning that many in-denial Clinton fans are dwelling in a bubble induced by a liberal echo chamber.

“I’m sorry to be kind of the buzzkill here so early on, but I think Trump is going to win….It’s going to be the Brexit strategy…The middle of England is Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. The total electoral votes of those four states in the Rust Belt — 64. All he has to do is win those four states.”

On his website, Michael Moore further expounded on the five reasons that the New York real estate mogul, who he described as a “wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath,” will be known as President Trump after the November election.

‘Trump is going to hammer Clinton on [support of NAFTA] and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of [Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin]…

“Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70 percent of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest…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…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 millennials that their vote is important to Hillary…”

Moore also noted that he likes Hillary Clinton a lot, plans to vote for her despite her backing of the Iraq War, and hopes his Trump election prediction will be proven wrong.

An aggressive foe of capitalism through his movies, ballcap-wearing Michael Moore projects a blue-collar image and ethos, but according to information that emerged in his 2014 divorce, he and his now ex-wife were worth about $50 million and owned multiple homes.

Moore’s essay does not address the Wikileaks #DNCLeaks email trove that appears to expose the party hierarchy’s attempt to undermine the Sanders campaign during the primary season in favor of Hillary Clinton. This revelation has caused the #BernieMustDisavow hashtag to trend on Twitter, calling for Sanders to rescind his July 12 endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.

According to Politico, Tim Kaine may have ethical issues in his background.

“Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine took advantage of the state’s lax gift laws to receive an $18,000 Caribbean vacation, $5,500 in clothes and a trip to watch George Mason University play in the NCAA basketball Final Four during his years as lieutenant governor and governor, according to disclosures he filed…Kaine reported more than $160,000 in gifts from 2001 to 2009, mostly for travel to and from political events and conferences, according to disclosures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. The givers included political supporters, a drug company that soon after bought a facility in Virginia, and Dominion, the state’s biggest provider of electricity.”

Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who has consistently predicted that “master persuader” Donald Trump will win the presidential election in a landslide, claims that the Tim Kaine pick won’t be particularly helpful for Team Clinton.

“In our irrational minds — where we compare everything to our personal experience — Kaine will play the part of the beta male husband whose wife can’t stop complaining about her terrible co-worker, Donald Trump. No guy wants to hear eight years of that. They get enough of it at home. My prediction is that Kaine will do nothing to improve Clinton’s standing with women. But the Clinton-Kaine ticket is a persuasion disaster in terms of the male vote…”

Traditionally, after the initial burst of publicity, VP candidates exert minimal influence on the electorate, although it also should be said that this is anything but a traditional political year.

Do you think that VP-designate Tim Kaine is a plus or minus for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign?

[Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP Images]

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