"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

Michael Moore is an Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author. 

"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.

Don't Let'em Persecute Wikileaks, It'll Make Journalists Criminals Around the Globe

Posted on: Aug 21, 2012, Source: OpEdNews.com

If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world, argue Michael Moore and Oliver Stone.

30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died ...A Letter From Michael Moore

Posted on: Aug 6, 2011, Source: MichaelMoore.com

Michael Moore on Wisconsin Uprising: "People HAVE HAD IT"

Posted on: Feb 23, 2011, Source: MichaelMoore.com

Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' 'Rush Limbaugh'

Posted on: Mar 6, 2009, Source: MichaelMoore.com

What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too.

Retired Sen. George Mitchell Slams Karl Rove for Smear Tactics

Posted on: Oct 23, 2008, Source: MichaelMoore.com

The end of Rove-Style politics.

Michael Moore: Here's How to Fix the Mess on Wall Street

Posted on: Oct 2, 2008, Source: MichaelMoore.com

We cannot simply keep protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think Congress should do.

Michael Moore: Congratulations, We Stopped the 'Inevitable' Bailout for the Rich

Posted on: Sep 30, 2008, Source: MichaelMoore.com

This is rare and historic; few can remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat.

The Rich Are Staging a Coup Right Now

Posted on: Sep 29, 2008, Source: MichaelMoore.com

The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this.

Michael Moore Fires Back at Lieberman for RNC Comments

Posted on: Sep 3, 2008, Source: MichaelMoore.com

Does the GOP have a Moore fetish?