Unearthed video shows Sen. Mike Lee saying getting rid of Social Security is why he ran in 2010

Sen. Mike Lee speaks during a hearing with the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights at the U.S. Capitol on June 15 in Washington, D.C.

Lauren Sue

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Thursday November 03, 2022 · 8:36 AM MDT

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Fox News host Sean Hannity has to know better than to ever start a sentence with what Republicans would never do. They’ve already proven, they’ll do anything, say anything, to get elected.  Before Hannity could even form his mouth to allege on his show Tuesday that “not a single Republican” has ever said “they want to take away your Social Security and Medicare and cut it,” a video of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah saying exactly that in his 2010 campaign had already emerged on social media. 

“It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it,” Lee said in the video. "People who advise me politically always tell me that's dangerous, and I tell them, in that case, it's not worth my running. That's why I'm doing this, to get rid of that. Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up.”

When The Daily Herald gave Lee the opportunity to clarify the statement, he relied on the ever-popular criminal defense of "I don't recall."

“So I don’t, I don’t recall ever having advocated for dismantling those—that’s sensitive stuff,” Lee told the Utah newspaper. “And I don’t I don’t recall advocating for dismantling them. I vaguely remember a time in 2010 when we were talking about a bunch of things.”

Lee rambled on in an attempt to defend himself, but the more he talked, the more assurance he seemed to give voters that he meant those words uttered more than a decade ago. 

Lee claimed he was talking about a “need to end” what he dubbed a “pattern of the federal government occupying space that it wasn’t intended to occupy and spending too much money.”

“Perhaps that was close in time and in proximity to another conversation about Social Security, but I don’t remember ever in any time since I first became a candidate for the Senate ever saying, ‘No, we just have to end Social Security and uproot all the expectations of those who’ve paid into it,’” Lee said. “Quite to the contrary. As far as I can remember, every time I’ve spoken, I’ve said, ‘We do have problems with that,’ in part because, when it was created in the 1930s, it was sold to the American people as something that would be their property, it’s theirs. They have it, it’s just held, like in trust, in an account, by the government, in their name. It would always be their money.”

Lee said a “weird issue” arose when the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the 1937 Helvering v. Davis decision that Social Security “was a tax and therefore not private property.”

The decision Lee referenced maintains that Congress has the right to spend in the interest of “general welfare” without violating the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which limits federal authority.

He claimed that his issues with the decision aside, "it’s a commitment that we’ve made to people who’ve paid into the system" and “in the case of those who were retirees” or “within a couple of decades even of retiring, you can’t pull that away.”

Lee conveniently left out of his statement any promise to uphold that commitment for those not quite as near retirement age.

He also advocated for increasing the retirement age. “You can’t create an abrupt adjustment to that without creating a lot of problems, but I’ve established a very slow transition toward increasing the retirement age and having it hover based on life expectancy at the time,” he told The Daily Herald. 

Problem is, Lee has already proven to be a liar.

A wake-up message all MAGA needs to see, hear and learn - but won't.

Screen Grab

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Thursday November 03, 2022 · 10:15 AM MDT

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This is your typical MAGA — dumb as a rock and pig ignorant. He knows history, but he doesn’t truly understand it.  He has facts, but he mis-uses them.

When people see an American flag and say that it’s a symbol of hate, or a symbol of racism or something like that — they’re really distorting what it means.  The idea of America still beats strongly in the heart of every American. And it’s about freedom and liberty, and personal autonomy. Personal sovereignty. Being master of your own destiny. Able to build your business, take care of your family. Things that are universally cherished and treasured.

Not for everyone pal.

Q: Do you feel that those are under attack in some way?

A: In every way. Look at all the social media. People being banned. I think censorship is by far one of the most dangerous things. Jordan Peterson talks about this quite a bit.

Once you censor a person’s ability to say certain things — you’re essentially hamstringing their ability to think.  If you can’t express your view — sometimes — I mean in this interview, sometimes I’m almost discovery what my view are by verbalizing them.

He started out well, but then he fell down the well of “social media censorship” because that’s not a thing.  Only the government can “censor” things.  Y’know — like the government banning books about what it’s like to be black or gay in America.  That is “censorship.”

If you can’t post on Twitter, you can fucking use Gab.  Or Parler. Or Tooth Cential. These people have no clue — it’s high time someone gave them one.

The reality of Post-Real America is not as these people would claim.  They are not being oppressed, they are not being silenced simply because they have a different point of view — they are being meagerly restricted from spreading dangerous and deadly lies.  Anti-vaxx lies. Anti-Gay lies. Anti-Black lies. Anti-Jewish lies.  Anti-Election lies.

They need a serious wake-up call and a serious lesson on what real oppression actually is.

Enter Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker Matthew Cooke, who has a few factual and profound things to say. 

Sometimes I’d like to grab a MAGA by the scruff and tell him something like this — the problem is that they’ll never listen.

This is a wake-up call for Republicans. America elected Joe Biden by over 7 Million votes.  And you’re confused because you didn’t see us flock to his rallies and cheer his smackdown like we were at a pro wrestling event during a global pandemic.

We don't wear matching hats, or have “No More Malarky” flags waving from the backs of our trucks. You know why?

Because Biden is not our tribal warlord. We believe the job of a US President is to represent more than one interest group. That’s why 81 million of us turned out to stop a narcissistic personality cult that embodies all seven of the deadly sins, most of all pride.  Which you’ve taken to level of blasphemy, claiming your political leaders are handpicked by Jesus Christ.

This country is called the “United States” and we have multiple converging crisis that need adult supervision. But we are being distracted trying to get control over a critical mass of you who no longer believe in reality.  Who’ve been hypnotized to fear a Joe Biden Presidency whenever you hear the trigger words “Radical Socialist.” Never mind that Biden is backed by America’s billionaires who’s existence depends on corporate capitalism.

Your cognitive dissonance is staggering, but understandable because the most sophisticated mass media tools ever created have eviscerated your powers of discernment.  And there’s a gold rush on slinging alternative facts making millions for opportunists who have taken you for quite a ride.  But you need to wake up now and start the deprogramming.

The election was not stolen. All that proof you kept sharing about suitcases and duffle bags of discarded ballots — it's all been debunked.  All the affidavits claiming widespread fraud have been thrown out. Over 60 lawsuits contesting the election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin — Republican states — many of the cases overseen by Republican and Trump-appointed judges, 61 cases were tossed, out.  Trump’s hack attorneys are being sued or are under threat of disbarment.  That’s consistent with the many criminal prosecutions of many Trump associates.

But the PR stunt worked on tens of millions of Americans primed for mass hysteria. You succumbed to Salem Witch Trial levels of mental lapse, believing our elections were stolen based on spectral evidence. Dreams about Krakens, which are make believe.

 It’s time to wake up now.

Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist organization any more than Martin Luther King Jr. was a terrorist. Or Gandhi.  Or Nelson Mandela. Peaceful protests and strikes and boycotts. That’s how society creates change without violence. Everyone reasonable knows that violence and looting and murder are wrong and counter-productive to a peaceful society.  That's why everybody reasonable condemns militarized cops executing citizens over cigarettes, cell phones, driving, jogging, walking, sleeping. Resisting execution. That’s what Black Lives Matter has been protesting.  This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s the largest civil rights movement in the history of the nation.

You need to wake up now.

If you join Black Lives Matter then all lives will matter. If it helps you understand it better, shut your eyes, say to yourself “My life matters, and black lives matter.”  If we unite there’s hope we can end the savage practice of imprisoning millions of people for the crime of being black, or brown, or poor.

Atoning for and correcting the mistakes of our ancestors does not mean the next logical step is White Genocide unless you think the legitimate purpose of the criminal justice system is to protect white supremacy like it has up until this moment. If that’s your underlying premise, you’re a racist. That’s why you wave a Confederate flag, you just doxxed yourself and you need conversation therapy.

It’s time to wake up.

There is no national Antifa network. Pretending to be fascist Trump supporters who want Civil War.  ANTIFA are Anti-Fascists who only exist right now because there are fascist Trump supporters threatening civil war inspired by the official Republican platform which doesn’t have anything in it other than clinical paranoia.  Reeducating you to believe there’s a conspiracy to seize your guns and gender identity at the same time so you’re so disoriented you can’t defend yourself against a mass immigrant invasion threatening your livelihood.

Come on.

The real danger came from putting a recklessly uneducated man with a personality disorder in the White House. Who spent his one catastrophic term branding America’s democratic cities “enemies of the country” while taking credit for economic growth rates he inherited from a Democrat.

He and his Republican Senate, under the smokescreen of your disassociation from reality and the brand name “drain the swamp” filled the cabinet with profiteers like themselves. Billionaires made a $Trillion while they gutted out State Department, our FBI, our CIA, our DHS, our Post Office.

Whatever Trump touched, he wrecked.

They attacked our U.S. education system. They tore down the minimal regulations we have protecting America’s water, and air.  They turned are already abysmal borders into a human right’s crisis. They smeared America’s top scientists and doctors, our healthcare system. They attacked the entire U.S. media. Their willful incompetence has been so destructive the U.S.A. is the epicenter of the worst pandemic in 100 years. 

Hundreds of thousands of us are dead.

Millions are hungry and struggling to survive. And their final act was a massive campaign to sabotage the bedrock upon which we stand, American democracy itself.

This is on you, the Republican party. The majority of white America elected a man whose business model is lying. Who demands total obedience while swindling and turning on all of his employees and followers after years of abuse. 

You elected a perfect cult leader. Our enemies are ecstatic. Our allies are horrified because of the suicidal Republican ideology of opposing any limits on gluttony and greed.

What was once a beacon of hope all over the world, American democracy is no longer a given.  Your right-wing leaders and shouting heads, they’re not gonna stop clawing their way down a bottomless pit of excuses to continue profiting off of selling you a virtual alternate reality made up of false accusations and revenge fantasies. Giving you a persecution complex they won’t stop feeding no matter how many are driven right off the deep end.

Any citizen of the United States continuing to fall for it, some of you thinking of taking up arms against the strongest military power on earth, others making excuses for these terrorists because you share the same beliefs. 

You’re delusional.

You don’t have a political party anymore. Come back to reality.  January 6, 2021 — that was your “Come to Jesus” moment. Armed insurgents threaten to hang the Vice President, kill the speaker of the House, they dragged a cop down a flight of stairs and brutally beat another with an American flag.  They killed police. A suicidal QAnon follower gave her life trying to break into the House chamber.

For what?

The most significant terror attack on our country since 9-11 happened because Republican radicals believed Democrats are Satan-worshiping pedophiles who stole their country and they’d rather die than lose the protection of their leader.

Defending truth and democracy and equality for all people against any tyranny,  foreign and domestic, is the only thing that unites us and protects our freedoms. 

That’s why Trump is being held accountable for his crimes. Along with every congressperson, every official, every officer, who conspired and continues to wage a mass deception campaign to overthrow American democracy, especially under the threat of violence.

The first amendment protects our right to express ourselves without fear of arrest. The right to free speech does not include threats of violence, and it certainly does not grant the authority to force media platforms to broadcast single-party hate propaganda that claim only it’s members are the “Real America.”

For the former Republican party, who call themselves “Patriots”, this is your wake-up call. Your nightmare of a brainwashed, radical, anti-American movement trying to destroy the country…

was You.

What the GOP is threatening to do to Social Security and Medicare is not politics as usual

 

They're also terrible people.

Joan McCarter

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Wednesday November 02, 2022 · 1:05 PM MDT

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Traditional media is having a hell of a time this election in the “both sides” game, when one side (arguably their favorite) keeps insisting on doing things like cracking jokes and boosting heinous conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, an attack that left her husband in the ICU with a head injury. These “journalists” insist on continuing to report on Republicans as if they are actually engaged in trying to make policy and help govern the country.

The result is stories like this one from Politico, about the GOP’s “ambitious energy agenda,” which is of course a repeat of what the GOP did when Obama was president: yell for more drilling and conduct bogus investigations. Or a story like this one from what remains of what used to be the paper of record for the nation, The New York Times.

“Republicans,” the headline says, “Float Changes to Social Security and Medicare.” Yes, “changes,” don’t you know. Nothing to get excited about here, just “proposals to limit retirement benefits.” They’re only talking about “limiting” benefits, not sowing the seeds of destruction of the programs to make sure they don’t exist for future retirees, the only not-so-secret agenda of Republicans since the inception of these programs.

“Prominent Republicans are billing the moves as necessary to rein in government spending, which grew under both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent decades and then spiked as the Trump and Biden administrations unleashed trillions of dollars in economic relief during the pandemic,” the Times intones, going on to say that influential Republicans have “signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden.”

I don’t know where in the hell the Times reporters and editors were for the whole of the Obama administration, because there is nothing new about this “willingness.” The paper definitely covered that crisis, and there are dozens of stories about the 2011 showdown the House GOP had with President Barack Obama and the Senate Democrats over the debt ceiling. They printed dozens of stories about government shutdown threats against Obama made by Republicans that involved demands to cut these programs. It’s not a new thing for the GOP, which tells you that they really do mean it.

It also took until the last third of the article for the Times reporters to mention that the threat is to hold the debt ceiling hostage for Social Security and Medicare cuts. “Those comments suggested that, unlike in past negotiations, Republicans could demand future cuts to the programs in order to raise America’s borrowing limit and avoid a default on government debt,” they write.

They do not write that this is the nuclear bomb of budget threats, that defaulting on the government debt would crater the national economy and throw the global economy into chaos. Times readers might realize that, but it would still be a worthwhile thing to point out that this is an economically terroristic threat from the GOP, and not just another policy dispute.

So anyway, yes, Republicans still want to cut Social Security and Medicare—if not for the current generation of retirees, then for the next ones—as a way to continue to undermine the programs. They also want to force major changes to other social safety programs to make more people hurt. Cruelty is absolutely the point, and they want to keep the people at the economic margins of society right where they are.

We can’t let that happen.

Don't be intimidated by MAGA thugs.  Your retirement is on the line.  Your democracy is on the line.  Your body is on the line.

CHARLES PIERCE/ESQUIRE: Well, America, You Were a Nice Idea While You Lasted

 

'The GOP have finally abandoned the last shreds of common decency, the rule of law and other American ideals.' (photo: Getty)

Charles Pierce / Esquire 

03 November 22

  

GOP has finally abandoned the last shreds of common decency, the rule of law and other American ideals.

It was this weekend that I finally gave up. I have watched the steady descent of American conservatism—and its primary public vehicle, the Republican Party—into the terminal depths of the prion disease it acquired when Ronald Reagan and Richard Viguerie and Jerry Falwell first fed it the monkey-brains back in the late 1970s when I was just starting out in this racket.

I mocked it and inveighed against it. Better people than I—Dave Neiwert, Chip Berlet, the SPLC—went out in the field, took good notes, and have spent four decades warning us what was coming unless the prion disease was kept in check. Too many people in a position to do so bailed on the task: the Republicans, because the prion disease was flourishing on the radio and winning them elections; and the Democrats, because they were too polite, or too naive, or too…something to care. (Some Democrats, worse ones, even tried to break off some of the people in whom the prion disease was raging.)

The public episodes are now too numerous to mention; violence—as any number of women’s health advocates will tell you—always has been marbled through it. Now, though, the violence is general and increasingly detached from reality. Over the weekend, watching the reaction to the assault on Paul Pelosi, which also was an attempt on the life of the person who is second in line to the presidency of the United States, I just gave up.

They are beyond anyone’s reach. They are beyond logic and reason. They left democratic norms and customs far behind decades ago. They are beyond political compromise. They are beyond checks and balances, and they have drifted off into the void of a space far beyond the Constitution.

I appreciate what Max Boot (nobody’s notion of a "libtard") wrote in the Washington Post:

It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats[...]So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.

But people have been saying this literally for decades. They all were essentially hollering down a well. They did not have large, influential media companies behind them. Their political allies were at best timid and at worst absent.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report detailing a resurgence of radicalization in the American military. The entire commingled Republican political and media, led by then-Speaker John Boehner, a reputed “moderate,” lit themselves on fire. The outcry, stoked (as always) by lies and deliberate misrepresentation, caused DHS to run and hide. It withdrew the report. You will note that I did not use the word “forced.” The DHS was not “forced” to do anything, any more than the Clinton administration was “forced” to abandon Lani Guinier. In 2009, the DHS was going to be in Democrats' hands for at least three more years. The department could’ve told Boehner to pound sand and stood by the report. In the real world, political outrage is not “force.” It only has the power that tepid resistance gives to it.

Which brings us to this weekend. Paul Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer during a home invasion and as a temporary proxy for his wife, who is the second in line for the presidency. We had Republican influencers babbling about gay trysts gone wrong, and idiot candidates trying to link the attack to their current bogus spin about a national crime wave. And this is the reaction, on national teevee, of the national chairwoman of the Republican Party. From the Washington Post:

Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday it was “unfair” for Democrats to link Republicans’ inflammatory rhetoric toward their political opponents to the attack on Paul Pelosi. “I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t say people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair. And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board.”

McDaniel cited an attack in July against New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, and falsely claimed that President Biden “didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against” Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which Biden condemned. “But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery,” McDaniel added. “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”

I just can’t anymore. These people are simply lost and mad. Their political party is simply lost and mad. Their political movement is simply lost and mad. Their candidates are simply lost and mad. We are on the very brink of handing the country over to the lost and the mad. The prion disease has jumped from one subject population to the general public, and in too many ways, it is creating its own reality in the national mind. We are all lost and mad.

In a GOP world turned upside down, nothing is as it seems.

Obama is absolutely shredding Republicans on the campaign trail. It's a delight

Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a rally to support Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin Mandela Barnes on Oct. 29, 2022, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

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Tuesday November 01, 2022 · 7:45 AM MDT

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Anyone who saw a Barack Obama campaign event in 2008 remembers the energy that followed the candidate wherever he went. He was inspiring, incisive, and a thrill to watch.

Believe it or not, he's even better now. The former president hit the trail for Democrats over the weekend, leaving a trail of Republican tears wherever he went. Unburdened by political office and sharpened by the stakes, Obama used a mix of humor, charm, and righteous indignation to unleash a spate of withering attacks on the Republican Party and its crop of hideous candidates.

In Michigan, Obama shredded GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon for spouting a series of downright baffling conspiracy theories.

Obama: “The other day a video came out of Gov. Whitmer's opponent claiming that Democrats have been working for decades to topple the United States because they are still upset about losing the civil war. And that COVID restrictions were part of some master plan to do this. Now, first of all: What?"

In Wisconsin, Obama blasted incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson for getting tax breaks for his wealthy donors while favoring cuts in benefits for retirees and hard-working Americans of lesser means.

Obama: "Some of you here are on Social Security, some of your parents are on Social Security, some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? ‘Cuz they worked for it. They worked hard jobs for it. They had chapped hands for it. They had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security. ... If Ron Johnson does not understand that, if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who've worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect, he's not the person who's thinking about you, who knows you and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin."

But the former president wasn’t done with the senator’s favoritism yet.

Tara McGowan

@taraemcg

·

Follow

“Senator @RonJohnsonWI’s adult children bought not one, not two, but three private planes  

— because apparently carpooling was not an option.” - the closer, @BarackObama

He also warned Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, to start digging up his birth certificate.

Obama: I know that there are some folks who think, and I know his answer running this way, but just because Mandela's name is Mandela -- just because he is a Democrat with a funny name, he must not be like you. Mandela get ready to dig up that birth certificate pic.twitter.com/a9UWxrlA9q

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 29, 2022

In Georgia, Obama reminded voters, "If a candidate's main qualification is that he's going to be loyal to Donald Trump, it means that he's not really going to be thinking about you. And you deserve better. Georgia deserves better."

President Obama is giving Georgia the ultimate “Hey girl, you deserve better than Herschel Walker” speech

He’s telling them to choose the good man standing right in front of them: Senator Raphael Warnock pic.twitter.com/qTjkWkcVPG

— Qondi (@QondiNtini) October 29, 2022

Obama is the best closer in the country right now, bar none. Not only are his barbs and insights as sharp as ever, he doesn’t carry the baggage that someone like Donald Trump does. Everywhere Trump goes, a critical slice of suburban voters are reminded of how vile the Republican Party has become, even if Trump’s cultists are crazy about him.

Obama, by contrast, is much more likely to engender a sort of misty nostalgia along the lines of, man, those were the days… before Trump got elected and everything went to crap.

It’s true that, as president, Obama didn’t turn in particularly good midterm election performances. But the landscape is entirely different this cycle than it was in 2010, for instance. Democrats have delivered far more for base voters in the first two years of Biden’s presidency: student debt cancellation, competent pandemic management, a historic investment in combating climate change, price caps on insulin, affordable hearing aids, government negotiation of some prescription drugs, and initial steps toward decriminalizing marijuana.

At the same time, Democratic voters got a shot in the arm following the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. This will also be the first general election to take place following Donald Trump’s deadly insurrection.

Biden and Democrats have banked a variety of accomplishments for average Americans amid a period of historic political realignment. Now Obama is on the campaign trail selling those accomplishments and showing Republicans no mercy in the process.

ALDOUS PENNYFARTHING: As pre-midterm dread creeps in, let me be yet another voice for optimism

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Sunday October 30, 2022 · 12:46 PM MDT

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My biennial election season freakout has begun! If scientists could find a way to harness my nervous energy in the days leading up to elections, they’d be able to power a small town for a year—or Rudy Giuliani’s liver for about 20 minutes. (Allegedly!)

But this year, along with my usual hefty slice of wry dread, I’m offering up something a little different: a message of hope.

Instead of obsessively refreshing 538.com, I’m looking at it only occasionally, and with a skeptical eye. Because, let’s be honest, no one really knows what’s going to happen. The polls have been wonky for the past two presidential election cycles—and yet the media seem to be doing their level best lately to convince us that their original prediction (a GOP House, and maybe Senate, sweep) will come true. 

Hey, I get the gloom and doom. I was a rock-ribbed defeatist for decades before I got on antidepressants and almost magically transformed into a cautious optimist. But this isn’t just Pollyannish posing. I’ve yet to see any real evidence that pollsters and pundits are fully accounting for this summer’s Dobbs ruling, which viciously stripped away a basic right (and economic lifeline, as some have astutely pointed out) from tens of millions of Americans. 

RELATED: Beltway analysts pushing a red-wave narrative in a highly erratic cycle is a recipe for violence

The so-called “experts” also predicted a close, down-to-the-wire decision in August’s Kansas abortion referendum, and instead, we witnessed an 18-point pro-Roe landslide. And if a true red wave were brewing, why did Democrat Pat Ryan defeat Republican Marcus Molinaro in a purplish swing district in an August special election? And why did Alaska, of all places, elect a Democrat to represent the state in its lone House seat? There are special circumstances surrounding all of these examples, of course. For instance, the conventional wisdom now appears to be that abortion has faded somewhat as a front-and-center issue since the Dobbs ruling came down the pike this summer. Also, inspiring voters may be easier when the vote itself is about abortion (as in Kansas), and Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system makes its special election a, well, special case.

But do these special-election results mean nothing? Well, maybe—but maybe not. And the truth is, we just don’t know. And neither do the nattering nabobs of know-it-all-ism at sclerotic institutions like The New York Times. 

If I could time-travel, the first thing I’d do—other than call in sick to my Catholic grade school with a wicked case of the stigmata—is leap ahead to the morning of Nov. 9 so I could avoid all this useless pre-election anxiety. Or leap back from that date to the present to either a) tell myself everything’s going to be all right or b) instruct me to locate a timeline where Ho-Hos were never invented, meaning the Ho-Ho-shaped hole in Donald Trump’s Ho-Ho-hankerin’ soul was never filled—and so he never had the joie de vivre one needs to successfully run for president.

But I can’t time travel. Yet. So here’s what I’m going to do instead: Keep my head down, keep preaching to the choir (because, if nothing else, it might help persuade the choir to vote and GOTV), and assiduously ignore Meet the Press—because all it does at this point is make me angry, and I already scream at Chuck Todd enough during random bath salts hallucinations.

I have mixed feelings about Michael Moore these days—for one thing, it’s hard to ignore his advocacy for Ralph Nader in 2000, which may have been a factor in George W. Bush’s eking out an Electoral College victory. But Moore, who was one of the few progressives to correctly predict Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, is currently saying not just what we want to hear, but what the mainstream media outlets presumably don’t want to consider—that this will be a blue- and pink-wave election that puts Democrats in the driver’s seat.

RELATED: Michael Moore is forecasting a 'Blue Tsunami' in November. Let's hope his prediction is right

Do I believe him? Again, I just don’t know. Yes, he predicted Trump’s unlikely win, but as any gambler or stock market investor knows, anyone can get lucky once. It doesn’t necessarily make you a genius.

That said, this take of Moore’s is 100% unvarnished truth:

• The vast majority of Americans agree with us on ALL the major issues — legal abortion (62%), climate crisis (75%), minimum wage (62%), paid family leave (70%), legal marijuana (91%), unions (71%), Medicare for all (69%), Equal Rights Amendment for women (78%), mass incarceration, tax the rich (80%), free college (58%), free pre-K+ (71%), stopping voter suppression, LGBTQ+ rights (71%), take money out of politics, more gun control (70%), etc.

The people are already with us — by a wide margin. So how can we lose?

By failing to get out the vote — a vote that is ours if we want it.

Do people really care more about temporary hikes in prices (a global problem, for which Republicans have zero solutions) and the supposed scourge of “woke” pronouns (personally, I go by “he”) than they do about bodily autonomy? 

We’re about to find out. But we need to keep our eyes on the road in front of us, because we’re still in the race, and too much peeking into the rearview mirror or fretting about what’s over the horizon will not help. Rallying the troops, staying optimistic (but not overconfident, as in 2016), and keeping our eyes on the prize will.

So enough with the malarkey already. Let’s all do our part—because if our clear majority actually gets out and votes, we literally can’t lose.

Above, a Republican: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Ginni wants to overthrow the government, and Clarence doesn't see a conflict of interest there.  Would any sane, caring, intelligent American actually vote for the party that harbors this immoral pair?  And when the Supreme Court outlaws interracial marriage, you can bet there will be a grandfather clause for Clarence and Ginni.