Even Michael Moore's jumping on the internet-giveaway bandwagon. He made his new film Slacker Uprising - which documents his 62-stop tour through swing states in the weeks leading up to the 2004 election - available online for anybody who wants it last week. Good thing, too, because I can't imagine anybody who'd be interested in paying money to watch a rock the vote documentary from four years ago.

Watching Moore passionately stump for Democratic candidates John Kerry and John Edwards for 97 minutes feels a little strange. We know the election's outcome. We also know what became of Edwards. The film opens with a short montage outlining how badly John Kerry stumbled and fell on his face in the weeks leading up to the 2004 night presidential election. Moore makes his entry in Tallahassee, Florida, the night before the election, giving his last impassioned plea for voters to step up and save their country. Then it skips back five weeks to Elk Rapids, Michigan in September, when he first set out on the tour. And on we go.

Besides his well-publicized offering of top ramen and underwear to college students in exchange for registering and pledging to vote, Moore spoke with and interviewed American soldiers, the families of soldiers killed in Iraq, lawmakers and his own audience. He led a cheering standing ovation for a soldier in his own audience, a symbolic showing of unconditional support for our troops that extends far beyond a yellow ribbon and much, much deeper than partisan finger-pointing and sensationalistic accusations.

Moore's got a well-documented narcissistic streak, and the movie consists almost entirely of his impassioned leftist rants. But he makes sense, and his mission is a good one, offering compelling arguments and doing enough motivating to help Kerry get the youth vote, however useless it wound up being in the end.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder makes an appearance, mincing no words about his hatred for Bush before playing an impassioned cover of Cat Stevens' "Don't Be Shy." Much as I hate to say it (being a Pearl Jam maniac and all), what Moore and, in turn, the Kerry campaign needed was not the flannel-soaked feel-good hippie acoustic jam that Vedder (and other musical guests Joan Baez, Steve Earle and Tom Morello) so earnestly brought. What they needed, and what Obama needs today, is a mind-shattering assault called something like "Motherf$!@er We're Going To Crush You."

But that wouldn't do much to sway the right, I don't think.

Anyway, Slacker Uprising is entertaining, but it's a message and a mission far out of date. In the unprecedented circus of presidential campaign politics and an economy collapsing around us, we don't really have time to listen to what Moore had to say half a decade ago. We've already got enough distractions coming out of Alaska.