In two months we Americans will go to the polls once again to decide who the president will be for the next four years. We will not be allowed to vote on those who wield the true power in this country. On November 6th we will not vote for the chairman of ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase or Citibank or the Premier of China. That day will come, but not this year.
Now, I know there are a goodly number of you out there who believe there's not a snowball's chance in Kenya that Barack Obama will not be re-elected to the White House. And why would you believe otherwise? After the incredible Democratic convention this week, with the best rock-em-sock-em speeches I've heard from a Democrat's mouth since ... since, I don't know when. You can't help but not have a contact high after this past week if you are of the sort who believes in economic justice, peace, and a five-dollar latte. Right now, with the buzz on, you are sitting there thinking that your fellow Americans will turn out in massive numbers, either because they want to continue the Obama era or because they're scared shitless of the barbarians at the gate -- or both. You're convinced that the Republicans have blown it with all their talk of the lady parts they want to control even though we now know that they have no idea where those parts are, what they are, or how they work.
Yes, it certainly looks like the voters will reject this obscenely wealthy man called Romney -- Romney of Michigan/Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Utah/Zurich/Grand Cayman -- this man who will not explain exactly how all his wealth was obtained, where he keeps it, or how much taxes he pays on it. He wants to turn the clock back to the '50s -- the 1850s -- and he refuses to offer any specific plan about what he'll do about anything. He wants to run the country like a corporation but he can't even control one 82-year-old actor on his own convention stage, a Hollywood legend who, in the matter of ten and a half minutes went from Good (walking onto the stage) to Bad (talking to a chair) and then to Ugly (the chair started ... swearing?). It was better than the best cat-flushing-the-toilet video on YouTube and it was a gift to all of us who know that Romney is doomed come November.
Or is he?
Last week, I said on the HuffPost Live webcast that we had all better start practicing how to say "President Romney" because, living in Michigan, I can tell you that there's trouble here on the two peninsulas and it's not just because Romney is a native son or that we like to watch kids from Cranbrook chase down gay kids and chop their hair off. One recent poll here showed Romney leading Obama by four points! How can that be? Didn't Obama save Detroit?
No, he didn't. He saved General Motors and Chrysler. "Detroit" (and Flint and Pontiac and Saginaw) are not defined by the global corporations who suck our towns dry and then split town to make more money elsewhere (except, of course, they continued to design and built crap cars, so eventually they didn't make the money at all). These cities in Michigan are about the people who live here, and in the process of "saving Detroit," Mr. Obama had to fire thousands of these people, and reduce the benefits and pensions of those who were left. There's a lot of pissed off people in Michigan (and Wisconsin and Ohio), people who weren't saved even though the corporation was. I'm just stating a fact, and those of you who don't live here should know this.
The other problem facing us this election (spoiler alert -- angry white guys may want to stop reading right now) ... is race. We all fear there's probably a good 40% of the country who simply do not want a black man in the Oval Office. In fact, in 2008, Obama lost the white vote. He lost every white age group except young people (18-29). And yet he still won by 10 million votes! The optimistic secret the Obama people know is that only about 70% of the voters in November will be white. So if he can win just 35-40% of them, and then get a massive majority of people of color, he can win re-election. There is no question in my mind that Obama is more popular than Romney and if everyone could vote from their couch like they do for American Idol, Obama would win hands down. As I have said before, we live in a liberal country. The majority of Americans (who do not call themselves "liberal") now support most of the liberal agenda -- they're for gay marriage, they're pro-choice, they're anti-war, they believe there's global warming, and they hate Wall Street for what it has done to them and their neighbors. The Republicans know this: that we, the majority, will have sex when we want and with whom we want, will read and watch whatever we want when we want, will use marijuana if we want and if we don't want to then we certainly don't want our friends who do to be throw into prison. We are sick and tired of being poisoned, by chemicals or propaganda, we think the Palestinians have been given a raw deal and we want our friggin' jobs back! The Christian Right (and their Wall Street funders) know this all too well -- America has turned, and there's no going back to not loving someone because of the color of their skin or expecting women to cede control of their bodies to a bunch of Neanderthals. So, what's a Rightie to do now that we've turned the joint into Sodom and G? They have to suppress the vote! They have to stop as many liberals from voting as possible. So they've passed many voter suppression laws to make it hard for the poor, the minorities, the disabled and students to vote. They honestly believe they can pull this off -- and they just may. The only "positive" thing about this is that their need to have such laws in order to win the election is an admission on the part of the Republicans that they know the U.S. Is a liberal country and that the only way they can now win now is to cheat. Trust me, if they believed that America was a right-wing country they'd be passing laws making it so easy to vote you could do it in the checkout line at Walmart.
But the voting on November 6th will not take place at Walmart or on any potato's couch. It can only happen by going to a polling place -- and, not to state the obvious, the side that gets the most people physically out to the polls that day, wins. We know the Republicans are spending tens of millions of dollars to make sure this very thing happens. They have built a colossal get-out-the-vote machine for election day, and the sheer force of their tsunami of hate stands ready to overwhelm us like nothing we've ever seen before. Those of us in the Midwest got a taste of it in 2008. Traditionally Democratic states -- all of which voted for Obama -- saw our state legislatures and governor seats hijacked by this well-oiled machine. We didn't know what hit us, but these new Republicans wasted no time in dismantling some of the very basic thing we hold dear. Wisconsin fought back -- but even that huge grassroots uprising was not enough to stop the governor bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. It was a wake up call, for sure -- but have we really woken up?
It's been a great week in Charlotte, and I'm getting ready now to watch Barack Obama give his speech. It's OK for us to take a couple days to high-five each other, but I cannot stress enough to you that unless you and I are doing something every day for the next 60 days to get people out to vote, then there is a chance we will all be saying "President Romney" come January. Don't think it can't happen. Hate, sad to say, at least in America these days, is a far greater motivator than love and feelin' groovy.
For those of us who believe that the history of the Democrats and the Republicans is to do the bidding of the 1% (Obama's #1 private contributor in '08 were the people at Goldman Sachs), and that while the Dems are a kinder/gentler bunch, they are also just as quick to want to take us to war and sell us out to the corporate interests (and, yes, Obamacare is a $$ gift to the insurance companies; only a single-payer system will stop that), this election is a bit of a bitter pill. We were hugely disappointed when President Obama didn't charge out of the gate after his inauguration and undo the damage that had been done (as FDR did in his first hundred days) -- and only when Wall Street stopped writing him the big campaign checks this past year did he get his mojo back and start fighting the fight that needs to be fought. He's a good and decent person (when he's not sending in drones to kill Pakistani civilians or prosecuting government whistleblowers), and his election four years ago was a high point of such emotional intensity I just couldn't get over how hopeful I was that this country had changed and we had found our moral footing. Reality set in a few weeks later when he put Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of economic policy and then he changed his mind about closing Gitmo.
OK, so people like me, just once in our lifetime, would like to get our way all the time! Is that too much to ask? Of course, there is a different question that is in the air now -- shall we give the country back to the crowd who gave the country to the 1%? I think not. So let's join in with our liberal majority and be fierce and relentless in these next two months. Let's spend this time educating people what we mean when we say things like "single-payer" and "Blackwater." Politics and the fate of the nation (and the world -- sorry, world) are on the front burner and those of us who want to wrestle control of our society out of the hands of the few can take healthy advantage of these coming weeks. Don't sit it out. Don't try to convince anyone Obama has magically transformed us -- just tell them four years is simply not enough time to undo all the hurt caused by biggest economic crash since the Great Depression and the biggest military blunder/lie in our history.
I'm going to go with my optimistic side here (sorry, cynics, you know I love you) and imagine a Second Term Obama (and a Democratically-controlled Congress) who will go after all the good that our people deserve and put the power of our democracy back in our hands. There's good reason why the Right is terrified of a Second Term Obama because that is exactly what they think he'll do: the real Obama will appear and take us down the road to social justice and tolerance and a leveling of the economic playing field. For once, I'd like to say I agree with the Right -- and I sincerely hope their worst nightmare does come true.
Follow Michael Moore on Twitter:
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Since you're making up figures, I'll do the same, although I think my statement is far more accurate than yours. For every white person in this country that doesn't like black people and won't vote for Obama because he's black, there's a black person that's going to vote for Obama because he's black, and there's a white person with white guilt who's going to vote for Obama because he's black.
Now, I personally don't plan to vote for Romney or Obama, and to me, race is a non-factor. But when people like Moore bring up race and write things like "angry white guys may want to stop reading right now," it really does get me angry because Moore is nothing more than a talking point.
"They have built a colossal get-out-the-vote machine for election day, and the sheer force of their tsunami of hate stands ready to overwhelm us like nothing we've ever seen before."
Really, a tsunami of hate? I just don't understand why it's so acceptable to call Republicans things like hateful, racist, and greedy. Sure, some Republicans are these things, but the same applies to Democrats and all groups of people.
Bob Dylan warned you with his album, Infidels.
-David Foster Wallace
I'll give one quick example. "The other problem facing us this election...is race." How clueless! Doesn't he understand most conservatives would gladly vote for blacks who shared their conservative values? Every conservative I know wouldn't mind one wit if the president, congress and the Supreme Court were all black – as long as they were conservatives! If Moore believes Republicans are so racist, how does he explain the thunderous applause at the RNC for Condoleezza Rice and Mia Love? What about the Right's enthusiasm for Herman Cain before he was accused of sexual misconduct? The racism charge just doesn't square with reality. Moore's other attacks are just as baseless.
Clearly, he's anxious about November. And justifiably so.
It is all a smokescreen. If Romney had dodged taxes he would have already been indicted by the IRS. He is already a whale in their eyes, subject to their full scrutiny.
He has the best tax and legal counsel available. He has done nothing wrong or outside of the law. If so, he would already be found guilty. Same is true of investing monies in the Cayman Islands or any other foreign land. If he had all his money in the USA, he would not have a diversified investment portfolio, which is completely ill advised and dumb. Everyone should have a diversified investment portfolio, a fact that is common sense in this world of ours.
I am less concerned about what Mitt does with his money than I am concerned with what Obama is doing with my money. why is no mention of Mitt's enormous charitable donations? Why no mention of his selfless donation of his time to work so many worthwhile causes for no compensation? Why no mention of his giving up a lucrative income of millions, all to become the POTUS? The man has given more in taxes and donations than all of us combined, and more than we ever will, but that is never good enough for liberals.
Their call to "fairness" isn't fair at all. One Mitt Romney gives more than 500,000 uncharitable liberals. It makes me laugh.....you are being duped, and you don't even know it.
Good point on the race issue. Obama's getting 40% of the white vote and 80% of votes from people of color says something about race in America -- I'm not sure what but it doesn't translate into ~ "40% of people in US just don't want a black man in office."
However his other attacks do have basis in facts. That republicans are supporting voter supression actions in 2012 to have better chance of winning elections, pretty clear to me. That Obama went back on campaign promises to close Gitmo, also pretty clear.
Then there is his overall tone of holding Republicans in low regard and couching their acts in negative imagery -- winning local elections as "highjacking." This tone of voice for me is a given, and I guess "baseless" in the same way similar tone of low opinions for Democrats are.
On the other hand, the fact that 80% of black voters voted for Obama makes them appear like a monolithic voting block - one that WAS motivated by race.
Regarding so-called "voter suppression" laws, you have to be honest and admit the Democrats are equally impassioned against them because they are more likely to lose if such laws are enacted. If we take a step a step back and ask why, we'd realize the Dems would lose the votes of people who are nervous about producing an official ID - criminals, immigrants with questionable status, people voting using different names, etc. Those are the types the Dems are catering to. Does that seem right to you? After all, I need to produce an ID if I want to check-in to a hotel, rent a car, board a plane, etc. But deciding the fate of the country - that shouldn't require an ID?? How does that make any sense?
OBAMA-BIDEN 2012!
The thought that Obama did little because he was beholden to Goldman doesn't get Obama off the hook even if he does the right thing now, he was tested and he failed, he will have to live with this.
Yeah I will get the usual but he got us out of Iraq (we are still in Afghanistan) (but did not fix the Iraq reconstruction contracts that Haliburton got an unusually big slice of and did a crap job of), we got Obamacare (Mike has put that one to rest). But the really big issue which is that we needed to readjust mortgages (yes, even forgive part of the debt at least),