Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #21
Don’t believe it.
(A daily series to counter the myth that the Republicans are going to win the House and Senate)
Six months ago, the pundits, the press and the protectors of the established order put out a lot of stories about how the Republicans were going to clean up in the November Midterms. And why wouldn’t they write that? History was on the Republican’s side. Plus Biden had sunk in the approval ratings. Senators Manchin and Sinema had blocked the votes in the Senate for most of Biden’s agenda. It was shaping up to be a comfortable, predictable midterm narrative — like any good Hallmark movie executive produced by Conventional Wisdom — and at the center of it was good ole “Grandpa Joe.”
But then things changed.
Biden started getting one thing after another passed. The price of gas came down. He pardoned thousands of marijuana users. He finally began forgiving student debt. Simultaneously, Republican candidates stopped pretending they weren’t white nationalists, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, and the Supreme Court stripped the rights away from the majority gender while expanding the power of the 2nd Amendment and telling the planet to go f**k itself.
And then the American people, as they usually do, started telling anyone who would listen — including the pollsters — that they wanted Democrats running the country. This sent shock waves through the establishment.
The country had collectively changed the channel and blew up the narrative.
But the mainstream media, instead of adapting, has doubled down, and is constantly trying to put these new pieces into the old puzzle. And that’s reason you’ve been subjected to so many stories this week saying that we're now gonna lose.
And the effect of this kind of reporting can be jarring — it can get inside the average American’s head and scramble it. You can start to feel deflated. You want to quit. You start believing that we liberals are a bunch of losers. And by thinking of ourselves this way, if you’re not careful, you begin to manifest the old narrative into existence.
But I’m here to tell you to stop, to pull you back from that ledge of despair because that won’t happen.
We don’t live in those times any more. The old folks who mostly voted for Republicans are gone, RIP. I loved a lot of them. But the others of their generation gave us war, segregation, and the destruction of the middle and working class. If you were 50 when you voted for Nixon, you’re dead now. If you were over 60 and voted for Reagan, you’re long gone, too.
Here is the real world we live in now: in the brief 14 years since Barack Obama was first elected, 56 million 17-year-olds have turned 18 and become eligible to vote. And since that day in 2008, they have set new voting records in election after election. In my state of Michigan alone, the youth vote more than doubled between the Midterms of 2014 and 2018. In fact, the only reason Obama won was because of youth vote. He won 66% of it. Get this: Obama lost every single white age demographic except for white youth. The majority of all white age groups over 30 voted for McCain. But the kids (and an overwhelming turnout from people of color and women) is what put Obama in the White House.
Has the white male-owned media bothered to share any of this with you lately?
The crap the media has put out in the last 48 hours! First on Sunday, CBS News issued this masterpiece of brilliance:
“DEMOCRATS’ MOMENTUM STALLS!”
Quoting from their own poll, they predicted that Republicans in the new Congress will have 13 more seats than the Democrats.
They then put in tiny type on the screen the disclaimer that their poll has an error rate of… wait for it!… plus or minus ELEVEN SEATS! Let me state the obvious: any poll that’s admitting it might be off by ELEVEN SEATS is not a poll!
Then yesterday morning came the paper of record, the esteemed New York Times, the same paper which on Election Day in 2016 told us in big bold type that Hilary was going to be elected President today. An “85% chance” that we’ll all be singing Hail to the Hillary by 11pm. They also added that there was only a 15% chance of Trump getting the electoral college votes he would need to win.
So yesterday the Times trumpeted their own poll they pay Siena College to conduct for them. They, too, said the Republicans were going to win the House. They also stated, with a straight face, that if the election were held today, Trump would win!
But for the Times it wasn’t so much the tricked up data they were publishing that was annoying, but rather it was the snarky writing. Allow me to peel the gentlemanly veneer off of their know-it-all tone and give you the blunt truth they wanted us to know.
Which was that women were all hysterical after the Supreme Court’s Roe decision at the end of June, but by September they had calmed down and come to their senses, no longer focused on the reproductive rights stripped from them, no longer all weepy and upset over the 19 dead children slaughtered in Uvalde, Texas, and their flighty little heads no longer spinning over the soon-to-be loss of our Democracy. No, by September they were filled only with their concern for the cost of a dozen eggs, the horror of possibly being killed by the crazed homeless and the nonwhite immigrants on the street, and the utter terror of temporary 8% inflation, the lowest in the industrialized world.
I’m not making this up. Why are white men still allowed to write this crap? White men who probably don’t speak to more than three women a day — or in the case of this article, one woman - yes only one woman from the vox populi is quoted here; the only photo of a voter in the article, a 37-year-old millennial woman who “1,000 percent” supported Roe but now is thinking of voting Republican because of, you know, inflation. Republicans, she said, know more about business. She said she’s a Democrat and a mortgage loan officer (I promise you, when I’m president, those two words will never be used by me in the same sentence).
Is the media too fixated on their own belief (their hope) that women have sorta forgotten about how they were assaulted this summer by the crazed Catholic Mullahs issuing their religious fatwa on anyone with a pair of ovaries?
Right. I’m sure most women aren’t thinking about that! Not when a can of Campbell’s Chunky Beef Soup has gone up 27 cents!
On today’s Tsunami Truth I wanted to tell you what I believe is a con that is being run on all of us when the media decides their job is not real journalism but rather coverage of a horse race. As voters, we need information and investigation on the issues and candidates before us. We don’t need Cassandras or fortune tellers. We need journalists.
So let me leave you with a small gift, a piece of actual journalism, something you may want to know about four of the Senate candidates. We know the new Senate will not be able to accomplish anything if the filibuster is allowed to continue. So I wanted to know, where do the Democratic candidates for Senate stand on the filibuster in the battleground states. Here’s what I discovered:
Mandela Barnes (D-Wisconsin):
“As your next United States Senator, I will bring together people from across the partisan divide to … End the Senate’s filibuster”
Tim Ryan (D-Ohio):
“[I am] pushing to pass critical legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act — and calling on the Senate to abolish the filibuster in order to get the job done.”
John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania):
“Last year, I became one of the first candidates in the country to call for abolishing the filibuster for a reason: it stands in the way of getting things done for Pennyslvanians.”
Cheri Beasley (D-North Carolina):
“As Senator, I will not hesitate to be the 51st vote to end the filibuster and codify Roe.”
And there you go. Four Democratic Senate hopefuls are on the record promising to abolish the filibuster! That’s good news. Share it with others — it may inspire them to show up and vote. Three weeks from today, we will win if we have sought the facts and spread the truth.
And we will be better off by ignoring what will now be nonstop stories from a media determined to tell us the Dems can’t pull this off. Just like they told us six sad years ago on Election Day that Trump was over, barely hanging onto just a 15% chance of winning.
The easy answer to all of this is: think for yourself. Do not operate from a place of fear. You know the power we all hold. We are about to have our San Diego Padres moment (aka, David and Goliath, the French resistance, Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day and The Little Engine That Could). That pretty much covers it. Be well. Be strong. And thanks for all your get-well wishes!
ICYMI:
Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truths:
Truth #1: The Campaign
Truth #2: Even a kid from 4th hour Trig class can beat this crowd
Truth #3: The Haters, the Bigots and the Supremacists Always Lose in the End
Truth #4: Introducing The Whackadoodle 10
Truth #5: Trump is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he is very afraid of You.
Truth #6: The Easy-to-Digest Republican Party Platform
Truth #7: Biden, Don’t F**k with Me
Truth #8: If you’re not registered, you can’t Roe, Roe, Roe the Vote!
Truth #9: Why will we win? Because the American people hate fascism.
Truth #10: Meet Blake Masters, Whackadoodle No. 9
Truth #11: 147 Reasons We Will Win on November 8th
Truth #12: Biden just gave us a boost and a toke.
Truth #13: Women. That’s it.
Truth #14: If the Mainstream Media Thinks There’s a Chance We May Be Right about Roevember, Watch Out.
Truth #15: Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, Whackadoodle No. 8
Truth #16: As Alex Jones has now been fined a billion dollars for his lies, that is nothing compared to the punishment other Republicans are going to get on November 8th.
Truth #17: Early Voting, Mail-in Voting, Dropbox Voting — These Were Made for Libs, Hard Workers, Book Readers, Artists, Busy Parents, Slackers, and Progressives like us! In other words, The Majority!
Truth #18: The Good Queen vs. The Mad King
Truth #19: A Workers' Revolt Extends to the Voting Booth
Truth #20: We Are in Charge
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Totally agree. It seems that the media has been a pool of propaganda since trump entered the political field and the "why" of it is because he attracts an audience, whether you're a supporter or not, the attraction is there. That pays off big for the media, it sells and unfortunately, that seems to be the game. Fair, accurate, truthful journalism isn't the mainstream. Instead, it has to be searched out and that's why your voice is so important right now Michael. We will not let them win. Keep carrying on!
Thanks for keeping me sane! I constantly remind myself that reporters today are slaves to the media moguls who own these monopolies. They give the narritive they are told and bring people like you on the air when ratings dip. Be well and thanks for hanging in.