Appearing as a guest on Friday's Larry King Live on CNN, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore claimed that a "silver lining" for the Democratic Party in their election losses is that conservative Democrats were "thrown out of office last week," as he complained that liberal Democrats had to "placate these conservative Democrats and they watered down these bills."
Missing the reality that so many centrist Democrats lost because they represented conservative-leaning congressional districts where their popularity was dragged down by their party's liberal leadership, Moore bragged that only three members of the Progressive Caucus in the House lost their seats.
Later in the show, he advised President Obama to go left: "I hope that, the lesson to learn is to see the more liberal you were if you were a member of Congress in last week's election, the more likely it was that you got reelected. The conservative Democrats, the majority of them were booted out. The liberals won. He should take this country in the progressive direction that he was elected to take it in."
A few minutes later, he cited Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, Ohio, as evidence of his theory that being liberal makes a Congressman more likely to be reelected as he ignored the fact that she represents a district so heavily Democratic that it voted 58 percent for John Kerry in 2004. Moore: "She's a good example of what I was just saying. She's the congresswoman from Toledo, Ohio, a state that just elected a Republican governor, a Republican senator, and yet, she's one of the most liberal members of Congress from a hard-hit place, Toledo, Ohio, and yet, she won by an overwhelming margin again in Toledo."
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, November 12, Larry King Live on CNN:
MICHAEL MOORE: I also want to point out, too, I think that this is, there's a silver lining for the Democrats in this election. The Blue Dog Democrats, the conservative Democrats, lost by a huge margin. The majority of them, in fact, were thrown out of office last week. That's a good thing for the Democrats. That's good because so much of what the Democratic caucus has had to do is to sort of placate these conservative Democrats and they watered down these bills so they'll be happy. Well, they're gone now. The Progressive Caucus - there's about 80 members in the Progressive Caucus in Congress - only three of them lost election, lost the election last week. So it's going to be actually a more liberal Democratic group, more progressive group-
LARRY KING: That's smaller.
MOORE: Smaller, but they'll be able to cohesively - well, look what the Republicans were able to do with the small minority that they had.
...
9:30 p.m.
MOORE: Here's the mistake that he shouldn't make as far as what Clinton did was, Clinton thought what I've got do is I've got to move more to the right and I've got to be more pro-business. And that's when Clinton started the deregulation of Wall Street and the banks. That's when he, all those, and his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Larry Summers, you know, started to put into place what eventually became once Bush got into office, then he took what Clinton started, put steroids into it, and then we ended up with the crash of '08. So, no, that's, we hope that Obama, that's not the lesson that he's learned from this. I hope that, the lesson to learn is to see the more liberal you were if you were a member of Congress in last week's election, the more likely it was that you got reelected. The conservative Democrats, the majority of them were booted out. The liberals won. He should take this country in the progressive direction that he was elected to take it in.
...9:36 p.m.[DISCUSSING DEMOCRATIC REP. MARCY KAPTUR (D-OH)]MOORE: She's great. And actually, she's a good example of what I was just saying. She's the congresswoman from Toledo, Ohio, a state that just elected a Republican governor, a Republican senator, and yet, she's one of the most liberal members of Congress from a hard-hit place, Toledo, Ohio, and yet, she won by an overwhelming margin again in Toledo.
- Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center