"President Romney" -- Why Those Two Words Should Scare You into Action This Electionli
billionaires are dropping piles of dough on this election ... it'll take people power to save the day.
September
7, 2012 | Michael Moore
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 one of the seven-or-so-billionaires funding Mitt Romney's presidential election! That day will come, but not this year.
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. 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 Didn't Obama save Detroit? No, he didn't. He saved
General Motors and Chrysler. 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 … is race. A large minority
of whites 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.
However,
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.
So,
how does one fight this liberalism? Conwervatives 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. 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---like they did to get
America's Supreme Court to appoint G.W. Bush Presient! 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 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.
Republicans
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. 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 whistle blowers), 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,
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 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.
Source:
Stories by Michael Moore
"President Romney" -- Why Those Two Words Should Scare You into Action This Election
Posted on: Sep 7, 2012, Source: AlterNet
Right-wing
billionaires are dropping piles of dough on this election ... it'll
take people power to save the day.
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