At yesterday’s FDL Member town hall webinar, I asked Michael Moore who he thought would  make a good third party presidential candidate.  His answer —  Matt Damon:

JANE HAMSHER:  Michael, have you actually had conversations with Matt Damon about this?

MICHAEL MOORE: No, but I think that he’s been very courageous in not caring about who he offends by saying the things that need to be said here, and if you want to win, the Republicans have certainly shown the way — that when you run someone who is popular, you win.  Sometimes even when you run an actor, you win.  And I guess I only throw his name out there because I’d like us to start thinking that way.  I don’t really want to spend a whole lot of time running symbolic campaigns.  Because there are a whole host of things we need to do, and Jane you have certainly mentioned a couple of things that you are going to have in your next thing here in September that are really critical, in terms of instant runoff voting and proportional voting, these are really important — things that need to be instituted to make this more democratic.

But I think these two parties are very weak right now.  Dan mentioned 1856 there with the Republicans, and 4 or 5 years later there was a Republican in the White House.  These times occur very rarely when a political party is so weak that it  literally can be killed off.  And I think both parties are in that position right now.  And I think that a group of people, if we had some real national leadership, and a real commitment to grassroots organizing, to form a new Democratic Party…and call ourselves the New Democrats, in fact that’s the name of a party up in Canada that occasionally does quite well up there….or call ourselves ourselves the Roosevelt Party.  Come up with something that would really be catchy.

Listen I throw these ideas out there, because I recognize the country I live in.  Living in Michigan now, the main topic of conversation this week was the last episode of the Bachelorette, and why did Ashley pick J.P. over Ben.  That’s the country I live in, and they all vote.  And I’d like to communicate with them.  I know that they’re upset.  And I know they don’t like these wars and they’re desperate for jobs.  Living in Michigan, we’re living in a depression right now.  There really couldn’t be a better time to organize, to run a viable candidate.  And to really say the Democratic party has not served us well, so we’re going to Democrats 2.0. We’re brining it into the 21st century, we’re going to be called the New Democrats, or the Roosevelts, or the whatever you come up with, and we’re going to run people who are going to win.