Perilous times do not necessarily spell “CERTAIN DEATH”
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg made fortunes reprising the style of those old 1930s and 40s serial films. Each week it seemed our hero was done for. In next week’s episode, we see he escaped in the nick of time.
Democrats look a lot like those guys as we approach November 8. In “O Ye of Little Faith,” Michael Moore cautions us not to be such bed-wetters. Get busy instead. Those who do “aren’t ‘hoping’ we win — you are making sure we are going to win.”
Media stories look to build suspence and generate clicks with shocky headlines. An experienced friend on one of my listservs this morning reminded me how predictably press handicappers got elections wrong over the last decade and a half. Clinton’s nomination in 2008; Romney’s win in 2012; Trump’s loss in 2016; Biden was a dead duck in the 2020 primaries, etc. Not to mention the polling.
Moore continues on that theme:
But we’re a nation now trained not to use the critical thinking lobe in the brain God and/or nature gave us. And so as soon as the Times says, “Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority”, we start to shake, our hearts race, tears well up and we immediately buy the new story — even though I, your humble narrator, have given you 24 big facts, 24 real truths to the contrary — plus singing to you in the middle of the night a Midterm lullaby! — while providing you a logical roadmap to our midterm Blue Tsunami.
And then this morning we wake up to this in the Washington Post:
“Democrats fear the midterm map is slipping away: Polls in both the House and Senate show improvements for Republicans amid economic and crime concerns.”
Yet, according to an NBC poll also this morning, a slight majority of Americans say they want the Democrats in control of Congress. And I am convinced that, if we all do our work in the next two weeks, we will have that majority in both houses.
Moore continues:
So why believe me? The guy in a ballcap with just a high school degree? The guy who tried to warn you in 2016, five months before the election, that Trump was going to win. Most howled and denounced me for stating what to me, living in the Midwest, was sadly obvious. It was like running down the middle of the street with my hair on fire screaming “Bloody murder!” but few would listen. I even made a quick documentary called “Michael Moore in TrumpLand” where I risked my life to try and convince a few hundred Ohio Trump supporters that they could both “not like Hillary AND vote for her!”. I soon realized that that form of complex thinking was not possible for this group of MAGA Americans. Nonetheless, it was the #1 most-watched piece of television on iTunes for eight weeks (“The Walking Dead” was #2). I’d like to think I helped to close the gap ‘cause in the end Trump only won because he got an average of two votes more per precinct than Hillary did in Michigan. Yes, you read that right. Two votes per precinct, two people who just stayed home on Election Day, two people you forgot to remind to vote, two people per precinct who didn’t use iTunes because they liked Vudu instead.
Remember, says Moore:
There are more of us than there are of them! By the MILLIONS!
Panic is unjustified.