PIERS MORGAN: Democrats are heading for election disaster if they don’t stand up to violence

Before the last US election in 2016, I was a rather lonely voice in consistently suggesting Donald Trump might win.

In fact, I was regularly mocked, derided, abused and dismissed by ‘serious’ political pundits for even suggesting such a preposterous notion.

Democrats were so certain Hillary Clinton would triumph they never saw the Trump Train steaming towards the White House until it ran them over at the ballot box.

Well, not ALL Democrats.

One of the few to agree with me was filmmaker Michael Moore, one of the most vocal liberals in America.

‘Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history,’ he predicted several weeks before the vote, ‘and it will feel good. Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human Molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for, the human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.’

Moore, like me, was ridiculed for such an absurd prophesy.

But he was absolutely right, and Trump duly won – sending Democrats into a collective anaphylactic shock from which they still haven’t recovered.

Now, Michael Moore is making a similar prediction for the 2020 Election.

‘Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,’ he said in a Facebook post. ‘But when CNN polled registered voters in August in just the swing states, Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie. In Minnesota, it’s 47-47. In Michigan, where Biden had a big lead, Trump has closed the gap to 4 points. Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC to pull this off? The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states— but not Michigan. Sound familiar? I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much.’

Moore’s dire warning was shared by New York Post columnist David Harsanyi who pointed out that in 2016, the RealClearPolitics poll average had Hillary up 6.5 points in Wisconsin on Election Day, and she’d been at 11.5 in August 2016.

Not a single poll had Trump winning Wisconsin, but he won there.

Today, Joe Biden is up in the same RealClearPolitics average by just 3.5 points in Wisconsin.

There’s a similar pattern emerging in other swing states like Pennsylvania, and, as Moore revealed, Minnesota and Michigan.

It seems absolutely incredible that any sitting president could possibly get re-elected off the back of the most disastrous year in recent American history – especially when the disaster has been made immeasurably worse by the abject personal failures of the president in the way he has handled the pandemic.

Yet what seemed unthinkable two months ago is now most definitely thinkable.

Why is this happening?

One, US coronavirus cases are finally beginning to fall in many parts of the country.

Two, the US economy is beginning to bounce back.

Three, since the appalling killing of George Floyd, President Trump has seized on the violent elements of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and frenzied liberal cancel culture war that erupted in its aftermath – and turned them into potential vote-winners.

His tactics have been ugly, brutal and ruthless, but they have also been undeniably effective.

As CNN commentator Keith Boykin put it, Trump has ‘amplified the decibel level of what had once been quiet dog whistles into a loud and aggressive bullhorn, warning fearful white Americans that radical left socialists, anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag burners are coming to get you.’

The reason Trump’s bullhorn is resonating is because there’s an element of truth to it.

Many millions of Americans are watching the mayhem happening across their country and feel genuinely concerned that their lives or way of life may be at risk.

That’s why Trump is now ramping up his divisive fear-factor strategy.

Yesterday, he even defended Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old wannabee vigilante who has been charged with using an illegal gun to kill two people, and wound another, protesting about the shooting of Jacob Blake, the black man shot in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week.

Rittenhouse, a white teenager whose social media activity revealed a love of guns and ‘Blue Lives Matter’ support for police, had come to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to patrol the streets with an AR-15. It is illegal for someone under 18 to openly carry a weapon in Wisconsin.

But Trump ignored such inconvenient facts to say: ‘He was trying to get away from them I guess, it looks like, and he fell on them, they very violently attacked him. It was something that we are looking at right now and it’s under investigation, but I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would’ve been killed.’

This was an absolutely outrageous twisting of reality.

Rittenhouse had traveled 20 miles across a state line, armed with an illegal assault rifle, to make a personal stand against the protesters.

But Trump knew his base would lap up his presidential support for him, just as they have lapped up his constant attacks on the rioters, looters and arsonists whose anarchical behavior has marred the otherwise mainly peaceful BLM protests since June.

By positioning himself as the man to uphold law and order amid all the chaos, and Biden as the weak strawman liberal refusing to properly condemn liberal rioters, Trump has found himself a possible escape route from electoral ignominy when all seemed lost.

And make no mistake, the more protesters continue to riot, loot or set fire to things, the more it will play into Trump’s cynical hands.

Joe Biden should win the 2020 Election.

To use a boxing analogy, his opponent is on the ropes and taking a ferocious pounding that should finish him off.

But Biden should heed the warning of what happened to the seemingly impregnable George Foreman when he fought Muhammad Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle and had HIM on the ropes receiving a ferocious pounding.

Suddenly, in the eighth round, when nobody expected it, Ali sensed Foreman’s punches were losing their power and leapt off the ropes to knock him out.

There are 70 days until the election.

That’s a long time in a year like this.

If coronavirus cases continue to fall, the economy continues to rebound, protesters continue to riot, and liberals continue to stand by and watch it happen, then Trump could deliver a similar stunning KO punch against all the odds.

Michael Moore knows this, and he was right last time.

In fact, he was only wrong about one thing in 2016.

Trump’s first election win will turn out to be only the second biggest f*** you ever recorded in human history if he now gets re-elected in November.

And if it happens, liberals once again will only have themselves to blame.