8 More Days of Working Hard And Closing Strong, "We Are Very Confident We Are Going To Win This Thing," MAGA Closes Ugly, Way Too Ugly

Come See The VP On The National Mall Tuesday/Welcome New Subscribers!

Happy Monday all. 8 days of hard work left until victory. I ask two things of all of you today:

• Make sure you have voted. Voting early helps our campaigns move on to lower propensity voters earlier, helps us grow our vote, and helps us win. Please vote early today if you have not yet.

• Volunteer for the Harris-Walz campaign. Here’s the official volunteer link. We need to leave it all out there on the playing field in these final 8 days and go win this thing, together.

Here’s what the campaign principals are doing today:

Vice President Harris will travel to Michigan where she will headline a rally in Ann Arbor alongside Governor Walz. The rally is part of the “When We Vote, We Win” concert series and will feature a performance by Maggie Rogers. Ahead of the rally, the Vice President will be in Saginaw and Macomb, Michigan.

Governor Tim Walz will campaign across Wisconsin, delivering remarks at an event in Manitowoc and participating in a political event in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In the evening, Governor Tim Walz will join Vice President Kamala Harris for the ‘When We Vote We Win’ rally and concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Second Gentleman Emhoff will travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to deliver remarks on the stakes of the election.

Mrs. Walz will campaign with Dr. Jill Biden in Michigan and Wisconsin. They will start the day at a volunteer mobilization event in Traverse City, Michigan. They will then attend a Women for Harris-Walz event in Bay City, Michigan focused on highlighting what’s on the line for reproductive freedom in this election. Dr. Biden and Mrs. Walz, both longtime educators, will conclude the day at an Educators for Harris-Walz event in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon did a very upbeat interview with Jen Psaki on MSNBC yesterday. “We are very confident we are going to win this thing.” Here is a clip from the interview and a partial transcript released by the campaign:

More from the legendary JOD:

Jen O’Malley Dillon: It is okay to be nervous and to be anxious, but don't be freaked out, because we feel very good about where we are. We are very confident we're going to win this thing. And it's not just because we want to win. It's because what we're seeing in the numbers and the early voting that you were just talking about, what we're seeing with this extraordinary enthusiasm everywhere we go, we are seeing signs where we look to make sure that we are on track to win a very close race. This is going to be a close race. We've known it the entire fall. We're very focused on that. We've built for these moments right now, and what we are seeing from turnout to our volunteer operation to the enthusiasm growing, is exactly where we want to be.”

On the campaign’s enormous ground game reaching voters across battleground states:

“Just yesterday alone, in our battleground states, we knocked on 1.2 million doors, and every weekend over the course of the fall, we've seen those numbers grow and grow and grow and for someone that isn't a traditional voter or maybe doesn't see politics or campaigning or traditional news, we have to work hard to reach them and reach them in ways that people want to receive their information. But that really means you go on a journey with someone. You're talking to them about the issues they care about. You are making sure they know the methods to vote in their own lives and what their communities are in, and you're helping support them through that. That takes a lot of effort. Most powerful in that effort is people in their own communities, volunteering and reaching out to people. That really matters.

“And we are so proud of this organization and the people that have come together, and it really reflects the Vice President's leadership. Our volunteers are from every walk of life, every, every age, every group, and they have relationships, and they have stories and reasons that they are putting this effort in, and they're sharing those as they're going out there to reach people. So we are so inspired by the organization and the people in this country that are standing up and standing with the Vice President and then going out there and doing the work to reach people that still need more information.”

The 2024 Election - I Would Much Rather Be Us Than Them - 8 days to go! Starting off, here’s my rough calculation of national polls released since Monday, October 14th broken down by independent polls and those affiliated with right-wing and Republican organizations. It includes all polls from over the weekend, including the ABC poll showing Harris up 4:

• Independent Polls Harris +2.4

• 538 Natl Average Harris +1.4

• Right-aligned Polls Trump +0.8

Here is today’s Washington Post more highly curated battleground state polling averages. While it is close, we win this election.

Where is the election today? I still think we are up by 2-3 points and in a stronger position in the Electoral College - despite what the averages and forecasters say. A flurry of red wave polls pushed the averages down in the past few weeks and tipped them to Trump - illegitimately in my view. Since late August 31 right-affiliated organizations have released more than 85 polls into the averages. Read more about this illicit effort in this recent New Republic article, and watch Trump admit to paying for fake polls in his Joe Rogan interview a few days ago:

And a reminder - Rs would only be working so hard to make it look like Trump was winning if they believed he was losing.

Heading into the final week we should be pleased with what we are seeing in the early vote. Using TargetEarly we know the 7 battleground states are running about 7 points better than the national early vote, a sign of the strength and superiority of our ground game and our ability to create “two elections.” We are running way ahead of our 2020 early vote results in MI, NE-2 and WI. While Rs got off to a strong start in the sunbelt, we are closing the gap vs. 2020 in AZ, GA, NC, NV - another sign of our organizational advantage. In PA it is clear that many have chosen to skip the mail-only system and vote on Election Day so the early vote data isn’t all that helpful there this year. We are doing fine so far, but PA is going to be an Election Day state, like the old days.

It’s trench warfare out there in the early vote my friends. We just have to keep working hard, keep closing strong and keep making this election bluer each day.

The Trump and MAGA Star Wars bar rally yesterday in Madison Square Garden was a reminder of why we are fighting so hard. For they here is what they want:

They want Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. Americans to lose more rights and freedoms. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist's baby to term, and for more women to die on an operating room table. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. Verified rapists in positions of authority. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Big tax cuts for their donors, higher deficits and less for everyone else. Books banned across the US. Seniors to pay more for insulin and prescription drugs. Foreign governments free to pollute our daily discourse and harass our citizens. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants and their families long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to get pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.

That they have chosen to close so ugly matters. Yesterday I wrote about one reason I remain so optimistic about this election - that our far more energized grassroots is giving us the biggest campaigns we’ve ever had, and those far more muscular campaigns are driving our repeated overperformance in recent elections. Today, I want to drill down an another thing that makes me optimistic - their ugliness and extremism has also been powerful driver of our repeated overperformance in recent elections and their repeated underperformance and struggle - and man are they closing ugly.

The opposition to this ugliness and extremism has been the central driving force of our politics since 2018. It helped drive our success in 2018, 2020, 2022 and throughout this election cycle. Running towards a politics that has failed repeatedly was an enormous electoral risk for Trump this time. It is particularly true given what we’ve seen since Dobbs - repeated Democratic overperformance in polls and expectations, and repeated Republican underperformance and struggle.

It has been my view that something broke inside the Republican Party with Dobbs. For many Republicans it was a bridge too far. MAGA had become too dangerous. The Rs had gone from “locker room talk” to something menacing and malevolent. It loosed the hold of a chunk of the Republican coalition from the extremist led party, and that when it came time to vote - not answer a poll - some of that coalition just could not vote for the extremists and sought alternatives. Alternatives like Democratic Senators in the battleground states in 2022, or Nikki Haley in the GOP primaries where Trump underperformed public polls in 19 of the first 20 GOP primary elections this year.

We saw this same dynamic play out in the European and French elections this summer. The fascists looked formidable in public polling and then dramatically underperformed in the elections. When it came time to voting these right-leaning voters just couldn’t pull the lever for the far-right parties. It was a bridge too far. They were too dangerous and menacing. And these voters sought and found alternatives.

Will that happen in this election, this year? It has been what has been happening in American elections since Dobbs and I believe it remains the likely scenario this time. Three weeks a go a prominent Democratic operative called me. He does polling and focus groups for an organization not connected to the Presidential election. He said that in his focus groups voters were starting to volunteer concerns about Trump’s fitness and behavior unprompted - his ugliness in Hopium parlance. The next day we heard the VP really lean into what I call the uns - unfit, unwell, unhinged, unstable - and she and the campaign have stayed there every day since. It clearly must be working in the internal data for they have stayed with it, and are closing out the election by reminding America what a threat MAGA is to all of us. Note this new ad from the campaign:

Friends, it is significant that as voting began we received clear evidence of voters who could be available to Trump started having second thoughts, starting to spit the bit. This is what we all believed would happen. For when only when voting became proximate did the gravity of voting for a rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon, a fascist, extremist, misogynist and racist, really start weighing on people. It became harder and harder, particularly as his clear madness become more evident each day, to view all this as innocent “locker room talk.” I spoke to a private group last week and my Republican counterpart, a respected Republican pollster, said Trump’s erratic public performances were breaking through to voters and they had started seeing Harris gain in their nightly tracking polls.

In a memo I wrote in the fall of 2021 I argued that Democrats had a chance of making the 2022 midterms far better than people expected if we could convince the anti-MAGA majority that had just voted so heavily against the Rs in 2018 and 2020 that the Republicans of 2022 were a more virulent version of the politics they had just rejected twice. Dobbs, the Jan 6th Commission, Uvalde, the extremism of their “bad candidates” did that, enabled by our more muscular campaigns we discussed yesterday. And we did overperform expectations, dramatically, in 2022. The Harris-Walz campaign is closing on their danger, again, for their danger, ugliness and extremism is the most important issue in American politics today, as it has been since 2018. What Trump just did in Madison Square Garden will I think become seen as a huge, self-indulgent blunder - a manifestation of his increasing madness - that helped supercharge our closing - and ultimately winning - argument against the most dangerous politician and political movement in our history.

My friends, 8 days out, in every way imaginable, I would much rather be us than them. Let’s keep working hard, closing strong and go out and win this thing, together, for our families, our freedoms, our democracy and our future.

More 2024 election analysis:

• Watch my Thursday night appearance on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show. Alex, Dan Pfeiffer and I had a great discussion about the election - polling, the early vote, and the big story that just broke about Elon Musk’s illicit and dangerous relationship with Vladimir Putin.

• My new video presentation and Hopium post on the election. The video and post are a very comprehensive deep dive on where things stand and are well worth your time.

• Our new Closing Strong episode with Nevada Senator Cortez Masto talking about why she thinks we will win there despite the early noise, a really interesting look at the third party vote (or lack thereof), and Tara and I do our regular roundup of the week’s electoral developments. Strongly recommend for those who want to go deeper into the Nevada early vote.

Doing More And Worrying Less/Working Hard And Closing Strong In The Home Stretch - 8 days of voting left everyone - let’s keep working it!

• Tuesday, Oct 29th, TBD - The Vice President Makes Her Closing Argument Speech On The National Mall - Register Here

• Tuesday, Oct 29th, 7-9pm - Calls for Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Janelle Stelson (PA-10) and Harris-Walz - Register Here (hope we will hear from both candidates, still working on it)

My one big ask today - donate to and volunteer for Harris-Walz. Beating the fascists remains job 1 today and every day until we prevail.

I want to thank all of you who are self-reporting on all your remarkable work across the country. Postcards, canvassing, back yard phonebank parties - you all are doing the work we need to do to win. For when the Hopium community is called - you answer! Thank you all.

Some have asked - are donations this late useful? Yes they are. My advice is that whatever you are going to give this year give it this weekend. The earlier they get the money the more useful it is to the campaign. Late money goes directly into augmenting paid advertising and reaching more voters. So yes it matters. Let’s keep working it people!

Harris-Walz, Our Presidential Checkmate States and Wisconsin - Learn more about our “checkmate” strategy, and support Ruben Gallego and these three front-line state parties:

• Harris-Walz, The Mothership - $1,346,000 raised, $1,500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | Subscribe to The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel and watch her inspiring rallies live

• North Carolina - $998,000 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $604,000 raised, $700,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Wisconsin Dem Party - $106,000 raised, $200,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch Our Recent Closing Strong Interview with the great Ben Wikler

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $310,000 raised, $300,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb.

Winning The House - Keeping getting very good vibes from our candidates and House Democratic leadership about flipping the House this year. We need to keep working it peeps!

• Support All 15 Hopium-Backed Candidates With A Single Donation - $1,770,000 raised, $1,750,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer, Learn More and Watch Interviews With Our Candidates (for our higher net worth donors note that you can give up to $49,500 split 15 ways for this group). You can donate to any one of our 15 candidates directly here.

Keeping The Senate Blue - this is a brawl my friends, and we just have to keep working it:

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $604,000 raised, $700,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Montana/Jon Tester - $175,000 raised, $200,000 goal (new stretch goal!) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Ohio/Sherrod Brown - $121,000 raised, $100,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Wisconsin Dem Party/Tammy Baldwin - $106,000 raised, $200,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $308,000 raised, $300,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

Growing The Hopium Community - We’ve set some goals for the growth of our community so more of us can be doing more and worrying less in the home stretch:

• Hopium Subscribers - 115,507 this morning, 125,000 goal

• Paid Subscribers - 13,453 this morning, 14,000 goal

Great work everyone. We are making real progress here. Hopium paid subscribers get access to a weekly live home stretch political briefing and Founding Members will have their own small gathering on Fridays. You can become a paid subscriber and help us hit our goals by clicking on the link below or following this link. The subscription tab includes options for gift and group subscriptions, all 10% off through Election Day!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you.

Let’s bring it home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Simon