Adam Gray Wins CA-13, Fighting Trump's Unacceptable 4, Biden's Economy Is The "Envy Of The World"

Hopium Paid Subscribers Gather Tonight at 7pm ET/Welcome New Subscribers!

Good morning all. Got a few things for you today:

Adam Gray Wins CA-13! - Friends, last night Adam Gray officially won CA-13 by 187 votes! I know many of you worked very hard on this race, many donated, many helped cure ballots. The next Congress will now 220R-215D, a Democratic gain of two seats from the current Congress. With 3 Rs leaving to join (or attempt to join - Gaetz) the Trump Administration Speaker Johnson will have a 217-215 “majority” in the early days of Trump 47.

To get a sense of how close we came to winning the House, here are the final results in three closest races Republicans won:

If 3,732 people in these three districts had voted for the Democratic candidate rather than these three Republicans Hakeem Jeffries would be the next Speaker (In the Presidential race if 116,000 voters in MI, PA, WI had voted for Harris rather than Trump she would have won).

Yes, my friends, it is in these close races where our work really matters.

Congrats to Congressman-Elect Adam Gray!

Here’s a link to our interview with Adam Gray from August 18th, and here’s the final tally for our 15 endorsed House candidates:

• Flips (6) - Gray CA-13, Whitesides CA-27, Tran CA-45, Gillen NY-4, Riley NY-19, Bynum OR-5

• Losses (9) - Shah AZ-01, Engel AZ-06, Salas CA-22, Rollins CA-41, Bohannan IA-1, Vargas NE-02, Jones NY-17, Altman NJ-07, Stelson PA-10

I remain very proud of the good we’ve done this past cycle. We made deeply strategic investments and got important wins in a tough year in AZ, NC, NE, WI and in these critical House races. Of the 8 House seats Dems flipped this cycle, our community aggressively backed 7 of them - Adam Gray CA-13, George Whitesides CA-27, Tran CA-45, Tom Suozzi NY-3 (special election), Laura Gillen NY-4, Josh Riley NY-19 and Janelle Bynum OR-5.

While we did not have the election we all wanted to have this community of proud partiots and info warriors did an awful lot of good, together, over the past 2 years. Thank you all!

Fighting Trump’s Unacceptable 4 - Late yesterday Trump’s nominee for the DEA, Chad Chronister, withdrew his name for consideration, and this morning Pete Hegseth appears to be close behind him. Here’s the latest from Punchbowl News:

Nominations: In public, Senate Republicans are giving President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees the benefit of the doubt, signaling a level of deference to the leader of their party while emphasizing the Senate’s advise-and-consent process.

Yet beneath the surface, several undercurrents paint a less rosy picture for some of Trump’s more controversial nominees.

Top Senate Republicans want to avoid offending Trump, who never forgets any slight. But there are GOP senators who don’t want to be forced to vote for unacceptable nominees just to mollify Trump, believing this will lead to more problems for him and them in the long run. These senators want their leadership to convince Trump to pull nominees rather than seek floor showdowns. This has happened already with Gaetz and DEA nominee Sheriff Chad Chronister — and it may again with Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth.

At the center of it all is incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Senate Republicans will have 53 seats come January and likely won’t get any Democratic help on the more controversial nominees. That means limiting GOP defections to no more than three.

Thune has spoken repeatedly with Trump about the challenges facing some of the president-elect’s nominees. And there have been staff-level conversations with incoming White House legislative affairs chief James Braid and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, among others. Vice President-elect JD Vance has also been directly involved and is in constant communication with his soon-to-be former colleagues.

At the same time, some moderate Republicans are talking informally about their approach to certain nominees, including Hegseth and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence. These senators are keeping Thune in the loop on their discussions and have no interest in blindsiding him — or Trump.

Republican leaders are also monitoring senators whose pet issues may put them on a collision course with any of the nominees, as well as a few others who don’t fit neatly into any camp.

By Tuesday night, Hegseth’s nomination was so endangered that the Wall Street Journal reported Trump is considering pulling Hegseth in favor of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. Our friend Marc Caputo at the Bulwark reported that Trump and DeSantis also discussed having DeSantis appoint Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, to the Senate to replace departing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been nominated for secretary of state.

Hegseth and his mother, Penelope Hegseth — who wrote a 2018 email accusing her son of having “abused” women, although she later apologized — were set to be interviewed on Fox News today in a bid to save his nomination.

Hegseth, the strong man, is bringing his Mom on to TV to defend him!!!!!!!! We need to keep working it peeps:

• Call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not.

• Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately and before Trump installs Patel to disable the process. Yesterday the Trump team signed an agreement allowing these background checks to go forward. President Biden should do Mr. Trump a favor and expedite the clearance process for the most sensitive jobs of State, Defense, DNI, CIA, Homeland Security and HHS (pandemic preparedness) so the new team can hit the ground running in January.

A brutal new CNN story for the rollicking Trumpian shitshow dropped this morning:

An excerpt:

Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-chair of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency alongside billionaire Elon Musk, has a lengthy history of attacking his partner’s ties to China, frequently referring to Musk as a “circus monkey” and a puppet for the Chinese Communist Party.

Ramaswamy’s critiques, reviewed by CNN’s KFile, include pointed remarks about Musk’s 2022 suggestion that Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China, a stance aligned with Beijing’s interests and one that drew praise from Chinese officials.

Tesla’s investments in the Chinese market and Musk’s comment on Taiwan have drawn fierce criticism from Ramaswamy, who argued the Tesla CEO was pandering to the Chinese Communist Party for business benefits, such as regulatory approvals and tax breaks.

“I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China,” Ramaswamy said in May 2023 when discussing the carmaker’s decision to build a battery plant in Shanghai.

“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” Ramaswamy added, referring to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president of China.

Tesla is deeply reliant on China, with deliveries from its Shanghai facility accounting for more than half its global sales in 2023

…..

As a presidential candidate in the 2024 GOP primary, Ramaswamy was often critical of US economic ties to China. While he claimed other companies such as Apple and Black Rock were enabling and making political concessions to China, he often singled out Musk for some of his harshest criticism.

“Elon Musk has, I think, demonstrated his willingness to change his political tunes based on the favors that he gets to be able to do business in China,” Ramaswamy added on the 2022 Fox News podcast.

The rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon is coming out of the box reckless, impulsive and idiotic and we need to keep fighting everyone.

Jennifer Rubin On The Historic Impact of Biden’s Big Three Investment Bills - In a terrific new WaPo column (gift link), “Biden’s $1 trillion investment is a model for economic growth,” Jennifer Rubin writes:

Last week, the Biden administration marked an impressive economic milestone concerning the “landmark pieces of legislation that make up the Investing in America agenda — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA].” Designed to work in concert, “this government-enabled, private-sector-led approach contributed to the economy defying economist expectations and is crowding in private capital to critical sectors,” Heather Boushey, chief economist for the Investing in America Cabinet, said in a statement issued by the White House. “New data released this week show that since President Joe Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris took office, announcements of private sector investments in clean energy and manufacturing in the United States have now surpassed $1 trillion.”

…..

The massive economic plan was not a matter of the federal government picking winners and losers, as some like to characterize industrial policy. The administration set out broad parameters — e.g., chip manufacturing, green energy, high-speed internet — while governors and/or the private sector prioritized projects. And, remember, the $1 trillion was not government spending taxpayer dollars. This was private money recognizing the utility of investment once government got the ball rolling.

Government did make a hefty contribution for infrastructure ($568 billion spread over more than 66,000 projects) and the CHIPS and Science Act (adding $39 billion in “grants and other incentives to semiconductor companies to build fabrication plants and produce cutting-edge technology in the United States,” according to a White House statement).

It is stunning, frankly, that the most successful and far-flung private-public collaboration in history — one that is transforming cities, states and regions — has gotten so little coverage from legacy media. It may be the most critical government-driven initiative since the GI Bill following World War II.

Her whole column is well worth a read. As I wrote on Monday, it is critical that we lay claim to the good we’ve done these past four years and not let the Trump Administration either tear it all down or take credit for policies their party - and Trump himself - opposed. Loud and proud people, loud and proud!

The Economist cover story from October 19th, 2024, two weeks before the election:

What Happened, What Comes Next - Our approach to the big post-election conversation has been to go slow, listen and learn, and right now I still have far more questions than answers. Here are some resources for you to dive into the big post-election conversation in the coming days:

• In a new detailed post and comprehensive video I offer my latest thinking about what happened in 2024 - the disappointing and the encouraging. Lots in here to chew on. One of my big takeaways is that we need a national strategy to grow our coalition again, find more voters, and build a new majority. The dramatic gains Trump made with Hispanics and young people unraveled the coalition that had gotten us 51% of the vote over the last four Presidential elections. We will need to go build a new majority coalition now.

• Winning The Economic Argument - In a new post I make the case that Democrats must have a deep and long conversation about how we can win the big economic argument with MAGA. 3 consecutive Dem Presidents have left the country far better than we found it. 3 consecutive Rs have been economic and societal wrecking balls. We should not be losing the economic argument to these guys, or losing ground with working class voters given our economic track record. There needs to be urgency about finding a better path here.

• Getting Louder - I’ve written a series of related post-election posts on the need for us to get louder here, here, here and most recently this one on how we need to get far smarter in how we strategically contest the right’s information superiority in our campaigns themselves. Both the Trippi and the McGowan/Pfeiffer conversations below also speak to this urgent need, as does my new post.

• A New Reform and Renewal Agenda - In a new essay I discuss the need for Democrats to develop a broad agenda for renewal and reform, a topic we’ve been discussing here for many months and one central to my February New Republic essay, Biden Must Reinvent What A Presidential Campaign Is.

• In this post and video I offer my heartfelt thanks to the members of this community who left it all out there on the playing field this cycle.

To help us learn from others throughout the family, I’ve launched a new What Happened, What Comes Next discussion series. Here are the first five of those talks, along with 2 relevant segments from my fall Closing Strong series with Tara McGowan and COURIER Newsroom:

• Ken Martin - MN Dem Chair, A Leading Candidate For DNC Chair On The Future Of The DNC And Democratic Party

• Anderson Clayton - On Our Impressive Downballot Wins in North Carolina

• John Della Volpe - On Trump’s Gains With Young People

• Joe Trippi - On The Power Of Networks And The Need To Build Our Own

• Rep. Abigail Spanberger - On Winning The Virginia Governors Race in 2025. Learn more about Abigail | Volunteer | Donate To Her Campaign | We have already raised more than $10,000 towards our $100,000 goal!

From Closing Strong:

• On The Need For Pro-Democracy Media - With Tara McGowan and Dan Pfeiffer

• Beyond MAGA Creators - Russia’s influence on the Republican Party runs deep with Stewart Stevens and Jiore Craig

I’ve also set up a thread for paid subscribers to offer their thoughts on what this wonderful and plucky community should do next. I’m grateful for the many comments we’ve received so far. Weigh in if you can in the coming days, and note that an annual Hopium paid subscription is now 10% off through the end of the year for those who may want to sign up or give a bit of Hopium as a holiday gift. Paid subscribers should sign up for our next get together tonight at 7pm ET. Lots and lots to talk about!

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