Michael Moore got the last laugh this Election Day

When filmmaker-activist Michael Moore, a Democrat, went against the conventional wisdom that was expecting a Republican “red wave” sweeping the midterm elections, I feared Moore had become unmoored.

I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t the first time that Moore had swung so drastically against the prevailing wisdom. I felt the same reaction in 2016 when Moore said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” that Donald Trump would win the presidential race.

That was a shock, since Moore is about as far-left as Trump is MAGA-right. But he’s also a realist. Unlike the stereotypical “coastal elites” who provide the core of mainstream pundits, he claims to stay close to the grassroots Midwest cultural heartbeat of working-class folks in his native Michigan.

There he picked up on the discontent that led so many other middle-class Americans, many of whom helped elect Democrat Barack Obama twice before shifting to Trump. Although the tirelessly self-promoting star of “The Apprentice” seemed to share little in common with his socially, religiously and politically conservative core supporters, the barbs he threw at the establishment in both parties gave voice to their discontent, even if his proposed solutions were, to say the least, undernourished.

Moore picked up on that and stuck his neck out far enough to predict a Trump victory and took a lot of heat for it from his own fan base.