Michael Moore’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #24

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #42 — Can you bring yourself to say we will win the House?

By Michael Moore / November 14, 2022

It’s hard, isn’t it, to believe in ourselves? Especially when you’ve spent the past few months feeling politically hopeless and trying not to believe the “predictions” shoved down our throats that we are all going to drown in a Trumpian Red Wave of election deniers and right wing nutters. And so millions of you — good people, liberals, lefties, Democrats, Montessori parents — sink into a despair, knowing in your heart of hearts we are doomed. Between Biden’s low approval ratings, the “record high“ inflation, and the media telling us over and over how the first midterm election of a new president is usually a slaughter (Obama lost 63 House seats in his first midterm), most liberal voters simply gave in to the inevitable.

Michael Moore in 2018

So I stepped in to help turn that around. Every day for six weeks I wrote to you, my Substack subscribers and social media followers. I sent you a daily email to give you hard data and facts (plus my own Midwestern common sense) as to why there would be no Republican landslide and that Trump would never rule America again. I asked only that you get five others to vote with you — and that you start believing in yourselves, in us, and in our wonderful, crazy country where there are millions more of us than there are of the haters and the Democracy destroyers. A country still unfinished, and my insistence that we do just that: Finish it. Make it right. And guarantee that everyone has a seat at the table and a slice of the pie.

Many of you wrote me with gratitude, telling me of the hard work you were doing to get out the vote. It lifted my spirits (which was much appreciated as I had come down with Covid on the fourth day of these “Midterm Tsunamis of Truth”, half of them written while lying in bed and trying to remember my middle name).

And then came our unexpected success on Tuesday — unexpected only by those who promoted the false narrative of a Republican landslide — but, sadly, unexpected also by all those who bought into that false narrative, namely depressed Democrats.

Many of you wrote me this week to apologize for not believing me because I saw instead a Blue Tsunami Wall that would protect us. Well, no apologies are necessary. I know how it is to be swamped by what the Times and NPR and the Wall Street Journal and a hundred pundits are throwing at you. And, without thinking, how people start repeating what David Brooks is saying! What FiveThirtyEight is saying! What their smart friend is saying. You hand your critical thinking mind over to them without even thinking about it.

And yet you never think to ask, “Why am I not hearing the opposing side to this narrative? Is there not a single person who believes the Democrats are going to resist history, make history, that the polling is wrong, that “approval ratings” are anachronistic and irrelevant… and wrong? That we live in a very new America where the younger generation is on fire, where women have had it up to here, where the calendar is screaming at us that we are just 20 years away from the U.S. no longer being a “white” country. A country where white people will be the minority by 2042. Those knucklehead white supremacists know it! What do you think the January 6th insurrection was really about? I mean if Herschel Walker is now their only hope, jeez they gotta be feeling just awful. What would great-great-Confederate grandpappy say about all this?

So, yes, I have been howling these facts out to the wind, and yet I could not find a single commentator on TV or in journalism who would break from the herd and agree with me that the whole stinking media has it all wrong and that the Democrats are going to do better than fine, and that the Republicans are about to have their ass handed to them.

During the six weeks leading up to the election, no newspaper, no magazine, no TV network or armed forces wire service sought either to report on my facts and data about “no red wave is coming” — or do their own reporting to tell the public that a fantasy narrative has been concocted to depress the Democratic vote. I’m on TV a lot. I’m always being asked to come on TV to join the discussion. But not during the midterms. They didn’t want to even consider what I was saying.

Other than Bill Maher (who didn’t agree with my analysis but thought I should be heard), Salon, and The Guardian newspaper [and the OB Rag] would let me put forth the possibility that the red wave was in fact a red herring.

Is it the ball cap? The Supercuts haircut? The wardrobe I loaned to John Fetterman?

In the final days before November 8th, three decent, brave non-primetime souls on MSNBC — the longtime pro Alex Witt, the rapper/lawyer Ari Melber and the indefatigable Joy Reid — gave me a voice. Viewers were shocked to hear someone say we on the left were not only going to keep the Senate, we were going to pick up a seat or two. That not only were the Republicans not going to clobber us in the House with 30 to 50 new seats, they might be in for an upset because it’s gonna be so dang close. And Trump’s mob of election-denying candidates were going to go down in flames. There would be record numbers of young voters, and women were on a rampage over the abolishment of Roe. The sword of vengeance would be theirs.

Of all of the above glorious victories we attained on Tuesday, my favorite was this:

In nearly every state, women voters outnumbered the men. And young voters delivered another record turnout — second highest in nearly three decades.

Women and youth made Democrats the real winners.

As I came out of the voting booth on Tuesday, an elderly woman came up to me. The color of her eyes was steel.

“Women,” she said to me, “we are ruthless. And when we are ruthless, men who cause harm to us, to our children, never see us coming. And then it’s too late. This, this what the Court did, now you will see what I mean by ruthless.” Chills. Because she meant it. Thrilled, because I believed her.

In most states, women voters on Tuesday vastly outnumbered the men (in a few of them by 55% to 45%!).

Guys — what did you think was going to happen after women were once again reminded that they can just go f**k themselves as they were told to do by the Supreme priests in black robes on June 24th of this year?

If you’re afraid of 2042 when it comes to race, get your male lug head ready to wrap itself around this fact: By 2028-2032, women will make up half of Congress; good luck finding a male doctor or male lawyer under 45 (the majority of all medical and law students today are women); and there will be a woman in the White House — and she won’t invade Iraq, won’t impose cruelty and suffering on the poor, the immigrant or the single mother; a president who will embrace the oppressed and welcome all who do the shit work none of us would ever do. From them she will find America’s next new leaders and geniuses.

So I need to close by asking all of you a favor. After the election on Wednesday, as I had for weeks, I tried to assure you that we not only are going to win the Senate seats in Nevada, Arizona and the Georgia runoff on December 6th, I think we are going to hold the House! Yet even after I shared with you 40 Tsunami Truths, still, until even this very moment that you’re reading this, you are sick to your stomach with the belief that of course we will lose the House.

So let me make this simple observation — when in your American lifetime have they not called who has won the House SIX FRIGGIN’ DAYS AFTER THE POLLS HAVE CLOSED? Never! So what do you think is taking so long?  I’ll tell you what I think: It’s because the count is very, very, very close — so close that the Democrats have smoked this election, and now they are just a seat or two away from owning the whole damn show in DC!

Can you handle that? Can you finally please stop always thinking the worst and that the forces of evil will triumph? Even if we don’t win, can you reach into yourself and at least “believe” we are going to win the House? Because our next victory starts there, inside of you. That’s one thing I admire about the other side — they believe so deeply in everything they believe in. They believe the earth was made in just 6 days. They believe Jesus walked on water. It doesn’t matter that it makes no sense or that there was no need for him to do that because he was a perfectly good swimmer. They believe Trump is a prophet sent to us from God to get rid of the IRS.

They win so much because they’ve got God.

We have Noam Chomsky. That’s not a fair fight.

So will you take a moment and say these 10 words out loud for me, right now:

There are more of us than there are of them.

And…

We will Hold the House!

Sure, it may not happen by a vote or two — but that’s not the point! The point is we’ve brought the Republicans trembling to their knees tonight. They can’t believe this has happened to them. They will not be able to collect themselves into a fighting force. They will fight each other. We will peel away a few of them at a time when we need their votes. Which Republican representative who won by only 40 votes is going to dare vote NO on the Violence Against Women Act? Or expanding Medicare for their parents?

Here’s a fact the pundits don’t quote:

In this current session of Congress, elected in 2020, 9 Republicans and 7 Democrats never even lasted until the end of this term! Some died. Some quit. Usually one or two are indicted. Some went out for a pack of smokes and never came back. Special elections had to be held to fill their seats. How do we now have a Democrat representing Alaska in the House? Because Republican Congressman Don Young died this year, and in the special election to replace him, Democrat Mary Peltola was elected. When the first two Republicans in this new session are gone, we’ll be ready to fly into action and clean up. One way or the other, the House will be ours.

But what do I know?

Spirits up everyone! Ride the wave!