Mike's Midterm Tsunami Truth #35
The kids are all right.
(A daily series to counter the attempts to depress the Democratic vote next Tuesday.)
Everyone loves to characterize potential young voters as apathetic and lazy, and too often diminishes or outright dismisses the power they hold. Surprising? No. A mistake? Abso-f**king-lutely.
Since 2004, young voters have overwhelmingly leaned Democratic. Like I’ve said in earlier Truths — the youth vote elected Obama to the White House in 2012. The youth vote gave the Democrats the House back in the 2018 midterms. And in 2020, the youth vote won Biden Georgia and Pennsylvania. Overall, 65% of 18-24-year-olds voted for Biden vs 31% who voted for Trump.
And this year all signs are pointing to history exceeding itself…
On Nov 1, Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) — the leading nonpartisan research center that focuses on young people’s civic and political participation — released its latest report. Based on 41 states where data is available, youth voter registration, age 18-24, is up 6% nationally compared to 2018. And in an election year where a number of races may be decided by a percentage point or two, anything above that in terms of new, young voters can make all the difference for the Democrats.
And this increase is in some of the states with the most hotly contested races:
+38% Michigan
+29% Kansas
+20% Colorado
+18% Nevada
+14% N. Carolina
+14% Texas
+5% Arizona
That 29% in Kansas helped the anti-abortion referendum fail, and that 14% in Texas may very well carry Beto O’Rourke over the finish line.
Between August and November, 53% of newly registered 18-29-year-olds were women, compared to 47% men.
But Gen Z doesn’t only have the ability to vote this Roevember, they also have the intent.
A study by Harvard recently revealed that 40% of all young adults plan to vote in this election — a record! Just two midterm elections ago in 2014, that number was just 19.9%! The study also found that young voters want the Democrats in charge of Congress by a 26 point margin.
And what are the main issues these young liberal-leaning voters say are bringing them to the polls?
Abortion
Protecting Democracy
Inflation
Climate Crisis
72% of the young Americans polled said they believe the rights of others are under attack, and 59% believe their own rights are under attack.
And the best part — we still have 6 days (including another whole weekend!) to keep driving the number of voters up! There’s still the chance, right now, in 21 states plus Washington D.C., to register to vote — 19 of which, plus D.C. offer same-day registration on Election Day, Nov. 8th!
Let’s keep up momentum folks! I am already doing my part by making my daily Mike’s Midterm Calls, and I’m asking you, please, continue doing your part to Get Out The Vote!
And don’t forget — the kids are all right.
Bonus Thought: If you want a quick fix to get you through your TV Cable news withdrawal, look for me in conversation with Ari Melber (Thursday in the 6pm ET hour), Joy Reid (Friday in the 7pm ET hour) and Alex Witt (Saturday at 1pm ET) — all on MSNBC. Be sure to tune in as I go up against the conventional wisdom!
Finally, in case you missed it, our Tsunami of Truth swelled across the Atlantic ocean last weekend, with a feature article in The Guardian. Check it out below!
For the past month, Academy Award-winning documentary maker Michael Moore has been emailing out a daily missive, Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truth, on why he believes Democrats will win big in America’s midterm elections next month.
Moore calls it “a brief honest daily dose of the truth – and the real optimism these truths offer us”. It also – at this moment in time – flies in the face of most political punditry, which sees a Republican win in the cards.
Making predictions is a risky undertaking in any election cycle, but especially in this round, with Democrats banking they can hitch Republican candidates to an unpopular Supreme Court decision to overturn federal guarantees of a woman’s right to abortion. Republicans, meanwhile, are laser-focused on high inflation rates, economic troubles and fears over crime.
But political forecasting has become Moore’s business since he correctly called that Donald Trump would win the national elections in 2016, against common judgment of the media and pollster’s businesses.
The thrust of his reasoning that this will be “Roe-vember” is amplified daily in the emails. In missive #21 (Don’t Believe It) on Tuesday, he addressed the issue of political fatalism, specifically the media narrative that the party in power necessarily does poorly in midterm elections.
“The effect of this kind of reporting can be jarring – it can get inside the average American’s head and scramble it,” Moore wrote. “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.”
Reached by telephone last week, Moore said that his purpose, in effect, is to puncture herd-thinking. He points to three recent examples where political norms were wrongly interpreted.
“If I said to you six months ago, ‘you know Kansas, right? It’s a huge pro-abortion state and this summer by a margin of 60% they’re going to keep abortion legal’ you’d think I had made a crazy statement,” he says.
“If I’d told you at the same time that in the congressional election in Alaska, a hard red state, that it’s not only going to be won by a Democrat but a Native Alaskan Democrat, again you’d have to question if I was out of my mind.”
Finally, he draws attention to Boise, Idaho, where an incumbent Republican candidate for the board of education was endorsed by a far-right group, the Idaho Liberty Dogs, and lost to an 18-year-old high school senior and progressive activist, Shiva Rajbhandari, who was also co-founder of the Boise chapter of the climate group Extinction Rebellion.
In each case, Moore says, conventional thinking was challenged.
“I have a high-school education so probably, maybe, you shouldn’t be getting your news from me, if you’d just been paying attention in the last six months to Kansas, Idaho and Alaska you’d have seen the red flags going up,” he says.
Moore likes to go off in a different direction. He comes from Michigan with its strong connections to anti-government movements – Moore attended high school one district over from Oklahoma bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols. They graduated the same year.
His read is not metropolitan-orientated. Last year he wrote that Democrats have “insurrectionist envy” of the January 6 Capitol riot. “Deep down in your soul, as you watched what your eyes could not believe was happening, admit to me that in that appalling moment on January 6, 2021, you were – how do I say it – jealous that it was the fascists who had risen up, and not us long before now,” he wrote.
Moore insists he’s not simply being provocative in predicting a Democrat landslide. “I’m sixty-eight and I don’t have time to mess around. I’m deadly serious.”
Moore predicts the election will see a record turnout of younger voters whose views pundits and commentators often miss. “If you spend any time with women, the Dobbs decision struck them personally and deeply. This was a religious edict based on conservative Catholic principles.”
Moore’s political musings are not limited to critical observations of the right. Missteps by Democrats are also apparent. “The biggest hurdle to what I’m doing with the series is the Democratic party,” he says. He’s been watching Democrat governor and state election debates on the US public broadcaster C-Span.
“It’s very disheartening and it would make even me question how we’re going to pull this off. The Democratic party consultants are feeding lines that are so lame and weak. They don’t go for the jugular like a Republican would. It doesn’t inspire people at home.”
“We stand here on the precipice of a very important election and our greatest enemy could be the Democratic party itself,” he adds.
But Moore has a further point, often made but not always heeded, that the biggest political grouping in the US is not Republicans or Democrats, but non-voters. This non-voter party, which is perhaps the most potentially powerful but also the most inaccessible, is the group Moore wants to reach.
“The non-voter party don’t see how politics benefits them, they’re disgusted with the hypocrisy, a lot are disgusted with the crazy fighting that goes on, and the craziness that Trump amped up,” Moore says, adding that when he turns on the TV in the evening he doesn’t necessarily go to a news channel but looks for a comedy.
Moore’s call-to-arms, then, is to reach the non-believers. “Everyone who does care, and feels like our democracy could be hanging on by a thread” now “has to do something in these last weeks”.
In his case, he says, it could be as simple as calling a cousin who doesn’t vote to give him reasons why, this time, it’s important and that “he can go back to non-voting after this.”
But what would he say to them?
“Aren’t you tired of nothing getting done? All this deadlock bullshit. One way to undo this logjam is to give Democrats a chance to pass legislation and let’s see how it works out. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe they’ve got bad ideas. But no idea and no decision is paralyzing and hurts the country. If we talk like that, talk normal, that could be a huge help.”
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
Truth #21: Don’t believe it.
Truth #22: If the election is about inflation and the economy, THANK GOD — We Win
Truth #23: We Believe in Science. And that’s why we will win.
Truth #24: Vote Local, Win National
Truth #25: The side with the best nursery rhymes wins.
Truth #26: We Will Win Because Americans Don’t Want to See This Happen...
Truth #27: We are going to win because our side has millions of good souls like this…
Truth #28: Whackadoodle No More
Truth #29: They’ve Got Big Plans That We’ve Gotta Stop
Truth #30: Turn Off the News! Stop Reading the Paper! They’re Filling Your Head with Mush.
Truth #31: If I Had a Hammer
Truth #32: This Is All You Need to Know
Truth #33: Let Me Call Your Non-voting Brother-in-Law!
Truth #34: Deep Down, You Know You’re Being Played
Photo by Hill Street Studios via Getty Images
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Michael, I want you to know personally from me to you how deeply grateful I am for your daily posts. You have so many good, decent folks, not just Democrats, but people with values and integrity being positively influenced by your endless commitment to rid this nation of the horrors of fascism. We know it will never be gone, it’ll go back to the darkness. It needs to be locked tightly and jealously away from our precious freedoms.
Voting. Voting against this contemptible rise not only here in the USA, but in other countries where looming fascism has been called out and weakened by voters.
Voters, we can all be voters! It’s a Constitutional right to all Americans!
We will toe the line! We will hold to the guarantee of Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness to all Americans, natural born and immigrant, have the freedom to shape our own futures as a single person and as a nation. Safe, free and fair elections help make this dream of All Men Are Created Equal, closer to reality.
Thank you for all your hard work and to the hard work of millions of voters, I express my gratitude.
Mike, you are saving my sanity each and every day when I open my email inbox and there's your wonderful Tsunami of Truth feature. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have passed it along to many friends and fellow activists here in the NYS Capital District. They love this just as much as I do. I have developed an immeasurable level of optimism as a result. Thanks again. You are a national treasure.