After A Remarkable and Inspiring Democratic Convention, It's Time To Go To Work and Win This Thing, Together

Paid Subscribers Gather Tuesday Night, Our Hopium Winning The House Thursday This Week Is For Josh Riley (NY-19)

Happy Monday all. We had a great week last week. Our party is strong. Our ticket is exciting, compelling and ready to lead. We are raising tons of money. Volunteers are flocking to our campaigns. We are filling arenas across the country. We are leading in the polls. Something magical and hopeful is in the air.

We are for the people. We are for opportunity and freedom. We are going forward, together, my friends. We are not going back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair of the Harris-Walz campaign, released a memo yesterday called “Team Harris-Walz Is Turning Convention Into Action.” I include the entire memo for you to review at the end of this post. Here’s an excerpt:

Heading into the Convention, our campaign hosted a weekend of action, and volunteers completed 10,000 shifts and contacted over 1 million voters. The convention itself helped build on that momentum, generating nearly 200,000 new volunteer shifts since the Monday of convention. On Thursday and Friday alone, volunteers signed up for 90,000 shifts, motivated by the extraordinary excitement around the Vice President’s speech.

We head into September with a virtual army of volunteers ready to do the hard work of talking to their neighbors, friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s battleground infrastructure remains incredibly sparse.

In just over a month since we launched our campaign, Team Harris-Walz raised $540 million - a record for any campaign in history.

The general election is here now. The next debate is in 15 days (if he shows up). Early in person voting starts in 24 days. We need to take all this energy, passion, optimism and excitement and turn it into concrete action. We need keeping working, keep outhustling them - it’s how we’ve been exceeding expectations and winning elections all across the country these last few years. My Hopium recommendations for ways you can help are below. Please consider donating, volunteering and joining us on Thursday nights the rest of the way to support the House candidates most likely to flip red seats blue. Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get all your friends to join you.

Remember my friends - Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope the election will turn out well. We do the work to make it so.

There are so many ways to help now - the one thing I hope all of you do today is sign up for a volunteer shift for Harris-Walz this week. Voters want to hear from us now. We need to be loud and proud and engage them as aggressively as we can. Sign up for a shift for the joyous Harris-Walz campaign today!

I’ll be hosting a political discussion and get together for Hopium paid subscribers tomorrow night at 7pm ET. Paid subscribers can register here and if you want to upgrade to a paid subscriber so you can join us you can do so here.

Thursday Night Postcarding and Phonebanking for Josh Riley (NY-19) - We are back at it this Thursday at 730pm ET for a night of work for a great House candidate from New York, Josh Riley. You can register here, and note when doing so you can now select which breakout room you want to join. We have trainings for both activities live each evening, and for those who are more experienced you can a select a breakout room without training and just get to work. Visit here to learn more about ordering postcards for these events. Each week we will be reaching our to core Democratic voters and encouraging them to Vote on Day 1 and letting them know when early in person and mail/drop box voting begins in their states.

Most weeks we will hear directly from the candidate at the beginning of our session, just a few minutes after 730pm so plan on joining us on time each week. At the end of each session, after we’ve done our work, I will be providing a 10 minute overview of the current national political landscape. So in addition to helping out on Thursdays you will be getting live political updates from the ground and from Washington, DC.

In the spirit of not letting up, “doing something” as Michelle Obama said and leaving it all on the playing field as Gov Walz has encouraged, I again make my pitch for the candidates and state parties we’ve been working for this year. A week ago Saturday I offered an in-depth post on the strategy behind our candidate and state party endorsements, including our Presidential battleground “check” and “checkmate” strategy. 24 days to go before early in voting begins everybody - time to get to work!

• Harris-Walz!!!!!! - $886,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel - Let’s make this a big week people!

• Winning The House - $900,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. Watch our recent discussion with Leader Hakeem Jeffries. To go deeper catch one of our interviews with our great candidates - Janelle Bynum (OR-5), George Whitesides (CA-27), Kirsten Engel (AZ-06) Will Rollins (CA-41), Laura Gillen (NY-04), Rudy Salas (CA-22), Josh Riley (NY-19), Tony Vargas (NE-02) and Adam Gray (CA-13).

• North Carolina - $406,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $334,000 raised, $400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $151,000 raised, $175,000 goal- Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb

Here are ways you can do even more:

• Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you. Early voting begins in three states on September 20th - just 26 days away!

• Watch my With Dems presentation on the greatness and goodness of the Democratic Party and this six minute video on the incredible stakes in this election.

• Help grow the Hopium community. Use this link to encourage others sign others up. You can gift a subscription to a friend or student here and get group rates too. If you have changed credit cards or moved you can you update your payment information or check your renewal status follow these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep our community growing the Hopium flowing!

Keep working hard all. It’s how we win - Simon

Team Harris-Walz is Turning Convention Momentum Into Action

Jen O’Malley Dillon/August 25, 2024

The enthusiasm and energy at the United Center this week was palpable – but that enthusiasm extended well beyond Chicago, spreading far and wide throughout the battleground states that will decide this election.

The Convention marked our biggest week of organizing since the start of the campaign, with volunteers signing up for nearly 200,000 shifts since Monday.

Heading into the Convention, our campaign hosted a weekend of action, and volunteers completed 10,000 shifts and contacted over 1 million voters. The convention itself helped build on that momentum, generating nearly 200,000 new volunteer shifts since the Monday of convention. On Thursday and Friday alone, volunteers signed up for 90,000 shifts, motivated by the extraordinary excitement around the Vice President’s speech.

We head into September with a virtual army of volunteers ready to do the hard work of talking to their neighbors, friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s battleground infrastructure remains incredibly sparse.

In just over a month since we launched our campaign, Team Harris-Walz raised $540 million - a record for any campaign in history.

Not only are our volunteers doing the work, but this week we saw unprecedented grassroots donations. Just before Vice President Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night, we officially crossed the $500 million mark. Immediately after her speech, we saw our best fundraising hour since launch day.

Even more encouraging than the total figure is where these donations are coming from:

• A third of this week’s donations originated from first-time contributors.

• Almost one-fifth of those first-time contributors were young voters and two-thirds of which were women — both of which are poised to be deciding constituencies in November.

• Teachers and nurses also continue to be among the most common donor occupations.

This fundraising reflects totals raised across Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee, and joint fundraising committees.

This week, the diversity of our coalition was on display not only in Chicago, but throughout our campaign’s engagement across the country.

• Women for Harris engaged over 10,000 women voters through its in-person and virtual programming, including phone banks and volunteer training.

• We launched our Latinos con Biden Harris WhatsApp group on Sunday, heading into the Convention week, and saw nearly 4,000 supporters join.

• Several other coalitions groups also ran Convention programming this weeks - including AANHPIs for Harris-Walz, Educators for Harris-Walz, Military and Veterans for Harris-Walz, Young Voters for Harris-Walz, Seniors for Harris-Walz, Small Businesses for Harris-Walz and more.

The Convention also supercharged our campaign’s outreach to conservative and independent voters: six Republican speakers were featured on stage and several more appeared in videos, including a number of former Trump administration officials - the most ever for a Democratic convention. In fact, our Convention was the most bipartisan national political event in recent American history. Also, this week, Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar and George H. W. Bush appointee, along with a dozen Republican lawyers who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush endorsed the Vice President. He joins the ranks of Congressman Joe Walsh, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, and many others who issued similar endorsements over the past few weeks.

Following the Convention, our campaign isn’t taking our foot off the gas.

In the states, organizers will be making a push this week with voters to talk about critical and mobilizing issues, including reproductive freedom, the cost of living, and protecting Social Security and Medicare.

On Wednesday, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will kick off a bus tour in South Georgia - their first time campaigning together in the state. This part of the Peach State represents the diverse coalition that makes up the Harris-Walz coalition, including rural, suburban, and urban Georgians – with a large proportion of Black voters and working class families. On Thursday night, in Savannah, the Vice President will host a rally to speak directly to Georgians about the stakes of this election. These rallies also help to build the campaign’s volunteer efforts. In the last month, Vice President Harris’ rallies have helped generate thousands of volunteer sign ups across the battlegrounds. Following her Milwaukee rally on Tuesday night, Wisconsin volunteers signed up for 2,800 shifts.

The campaign also continues its strong paid outreach program. On Friday, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new TV ad, airing across media markets in battleground states, reinforcing the Vice President’s economic vision and belief in building up the middle class, lowering costs, and creating an opportunity economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead. This ad will run as part of a $150 million television buy for August, and then, starting immediately after Labor Day, we already have $370 million in television and digital reservations through Election Day. This fall buy includes the largest digital reservation in the history of American politics, reflecting the campaign’s commitment to meet voters wherever they are.

Bottom line: The Convention was a galvanizing moment for the Harris-Walz coalition throughout the country, energizing and mobilizing volunteer and grassroots donors alike. Headed into Labor Day, our campaign is using those resources and enthusiasm to build on our momentum, taking no voters for granted and communicating relentlessly with battleground voters every single day between now and Election Day – all the while Trump is focused on very little beyond online tantrums and attacking the voters critical to winning 270 electoral votes.