What's Michael Moore Doing This Election?

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In the book, which was completed in June, Moore offers the Democrats an electoral-college plan: Don't worry about Florida and Ohio. Instead, concentrate on picking off New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa and maybe Colorado from Bush's swag in 2004; hold on to the states that went for Kerry; and you're over the top. As of this weekend, the polls had Obama ahead in all four of Moore's battleground states (the Nevada race is the closest). Moore couldn't have anticipated that Obama would benefit from banking chaos — but he does address, on the book's first page, the personal-credit crisis, which he sees as our citizens' response to Bush's call to defeat the terrorists by going shopping. "So a million homes are snatched from hard-working Americans!" he writes, sarcasm dripping from the page. "THAT'S A SMALL PRICE TO PAY FOR FREEDOM!"

Slacker Uprising

Counting Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko and Bowling for Columbine, Moore is responsible for three of the five top-grossing documentaries of all time — it's Moore, Gore and the penguins. Slacker Uprising won't join this company, since it wasn't released in theaters, and it won't be a big moneymaking DVD (as of Sunday night, it was No. 2,829 on Amazon's best-seller list), because Moore is offering it free on his website. There it's sort of a sensation: 2 million hits in the first three days; it reached No. 1 on both iTunes and Amazon VOD. ("The only return any of us are hoping for," Moore writes, "is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November.") No question, the movie is worth every penny — even the $10 price at some video stores.

Called Captain Mike Across America when it played to two packed houses at last year's Toronto Film Festival, the film details Moore's attempt to get young people, traditionally the least likely voters, off their duffs and into the polling booth. Slacker Uprising, shot and edited by Bernardo Loyola, is the hagiographic record of that tour.

Since Moore attracted huge crowds at most places, the picture inevitably has the feeling of both a rock-concert movie (with reaction shots of adoring fans, including one woman holding a "Hug me, Michael" sign) and Triumph of the Will (the central figure lands in a city, meets the locals, attends a rally with guest speakers, then wows the crowd himself). Among the guests are Celeste Zappala, the outspoken mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, and a cadre of antiwar diplomats. At some venues, famous musicians are on hand: Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Steve Earle and Tom Morello, ex of Rage Against the Machine.

But Moore is the scruffy, paunchy, bespectacled rock star here. And unlike most performers, he has enough fresh material to make each of the appearances included in the movie seem as if he were giving a new speech every night. His jolly, intimate style sells every zinger to audiences who would have bought his line anyway. He's also an ad-lib adept. When one clutch of Catholic protesters recites the Our Father and Hail Mary aloud during a rally, Moore asks them, "You're not gonna do the whole rosary, are ya?" and then the more pertinent, "What did Jesus bomb?" The movie leaves little doubt that if Kerry had been half the campaigner Moore is, on Tuesday he might have been on the ballot for a second term as President.

See the screwups of Campaign '08.

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