Morning all. Got together with our plucky and patriotic paid subscribers last night. I offered some initial thoughts about our perilous political moment, and then took questions for more than 30 minutes. A big thank you to our paid subscribers for providing the resources to make Hopium go. A recording of my talk is above, and for those who would rather read along there is rough transcript too. I hope you will watch in the coming days and share with those you think would benefit.
In the video I make four key points worth reviewing this morning:
Trump Has No Plan To Make Us Great - Trump’s plan is to make America far less than what we have been, a diminished nation, poorer, weaker, less healthy, less safe and less free. “Greatness” is the biggest of his Big Lies. It is much more like sabotage.
And it is already happening - our economy has slowed, prices are rising; he is dismantling our world-leading, prosperity-producing science and research ecosystem; we are aligning ourselves with a country that wishes us ill, Russia, leaving our decades old global security architecture and alliances behind; and our Constitutional order is under unprecedented assault. There is great urgency for our leaders to act now. For Trump is breaking things that will be very hard, if not impossible, to repair.
Our descriptions of Trump must now use words like weak, losing, cowardice, appeasement, betrayal, decline. And we must be very clear about one thing - America and the American people are not winning under Trump. We are losing (link for more).
Trump’s Poll Numbers Are In Rapid and Precipitous Decline - Trump is losing support and is far weaker today than when he took office two months ago (link for a roundup of recent polls). His job approval has come way down, a major measure of consumer confidence is at a 45 year low, and he is now deeply underwater on the major economic measures - the economy and jobs, inflation, tariffs. As I’ve been writing this week Trump has lost what was has been a critical bridge to his non-MAGA supporters - that with him you would make more money, be successful, have a better life. That is gone for Trump now with non-MAGAs, and what that leaves him with is the ugliest parts of him and his agenda. It’s a significant development as his decline has been rapid and steep.
I’ve been writing a lot about the sturdy and reliable Economist/YouGov weekly tracking poll that comes out midday on Wednesdays. Yesterday’s track found Trump losing 5 points of job approval over the past week, a shocking fall. Here is where he now stands on the key measures and with the key groups we’ve been tracking:
Trump Job Approval - Change Since Jan 20th
Overall 49%-43% to 45%-50% (11 pt swing against Trump)
Hispanics 42%-47% to 31%-61% (25 pt swing against Trump)
18-29 y/os 48%-43% to 44%-48% (9 pt swing against Trump)
Independents 41%-45% to 37%-54% (13 pt swing against Trump)
Trump Job Approval For Jobs and The Economy - Change Since Jan 20th
Overall 49%-37% to 45%-49% (16 pt swing against Trump)
Hispanics 41%-36% to 34%-61% (32 pt swing against Trump)
18-29 y/os 51%-33% to 42%-51% - (27 pt swing against Trump)
Independents 43%-35% to 36%-52% - (24 pt swing against Trump)
Friends, this is dramatic erosion in a very short period of time. He is no longer the political figure he was in November. He is greatly diminished, and the coalition that won him the election has begun to unravel.
Dems Are Raising Their Game - I go into depth on this topic in my new interview with DNC Vice-Chair/ASDC President Jane Kleeb but a few highlights.
House Dems have created a new task force led by Rep. Joe Neguse and Rep. Jamie Raskin to fight Trump’s assault on our government and the Constitutional order more effectively; they have filed their first amicus brief in a key legal challenge to Trump and held their first shadow hearing; they held a national organizing event with the DNC that involved more than 100,000 people and fought the partisan Republican CR.
The DNC did this prototype YouTube organizing event with the House Dems. Along with the House Dems and State Parties the DNC has launched an ambitious 50 state “People’s Town Hall” program that kicked off last Friday in Iowa. They are pouring resources into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race; started a new social media rapid response channel called FactPost news; started a new grassroots oriented Substack, The Blue Print; and as Jane discussed will soon be opening up a true 24/7/365 War Room.
As Jane and I discuss, and as we discussed last night, in my mind the big opportunity for Democrats now is create a new integrated DNC-Senate-House strategy to see the 6 million contributors to the Harris campaign - all of us - as partners in the fight and not just donors to the cause. We need to come to understand that The Party/Our Ferocious Opposition is 6 million proud patriots ready to go work, together, for their freedoms, their families and their future and that our leaders need to put us to work, now, without delay.
It is important for this community to recognize it is a new day at the DNC and in the state and local parties. They are in the process of becoming much more open to partnership and aggressive locally-driven action. Folks should be calling their state and local parties and volunteer to help them succeed in a time when they are attempting to become more ambitious, relevant and effective.
We also must recognize that while the DNC, State Parties and the House Dems are stepping up and raising their game this is not true of the Senate Democrats, and we must continue to, in our calls and visits, insist that these old dogs learn new tricks and do far more to challenge Trump (link for more).
Opening Up A Second Front/A Letter To America - Democrats have done a very good job so far at focusing on Trump’s reckless economic agenda and his plutocratic, deficit-exploding, worker betraying budget outline. Our language and approach here is strong, fluent, and effective. Trump’s numbers are coming down, and his brand is becoming tarnished and degraded, something far less than it was.
But we must now open up a sustained party-wide Second Front that gives equal focus to Trump’s dismemberment of the US government, his unprecedented assault on our Constitutional order and his selling out of America and our allies to Putin. We must do this now, without delay, for Trump and Musk are breaking things that will be very hard, if not impossible, to repair; it gives us another effective way to degrade his already degraded brand; it also gives us to position ourselves not as Democrats or opponents of Trump, but as proud patriots defending this great country.
As I showed in this recent memo polling tells us there is great opportunity in these three areas; we know much of the grassroots energy we’ve seen has come in response to Trump’s assault on the US government and our democracy; and we see the escalating success we are having in the Courts.
To truly open up this Second Front I think House Dems should rename their Rapid Response Task Force something like the Task Force To Preserve American Democracy and encourage it to become far more aggressive; create a second task force, A National Security Task Force, that focuses on aggressively challenging Trump’s attempt to align us with Putin and abandon our allies, NATO and the West; hold far more shadow hearings; launch a 24/7/365 war room that creates daily video and events to feed the pro-democracy media ecosystem and make all of this work much, much louder; and encourage the Senate Dems to join them in defending this great country far more aggressively.
Of all the things House Dems can do now to open up this vitial Second Front is to write A Letter to America that spells out in plain, clear language what the Founders called in the Declaration of Independence the “abuses,” “injuries,” and “usurpations” of their mad leader, and “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” Our leaders in Congress simply must make a formal, historic statement that they believe that what Trump and Musk are doing is unconstitutional, illegal and wrong; an unprecedented betrayal of the country; and that as custodians of the legislative branch they believe their authorities are being illicitly usurped.
This Letter To America can become the rallying cry for our nascent opposition movement at every Town Hall and protest. It can become an ongoing amicus brief used in every legal challenge to Trump, as most are built on the legal argument that Trump does not have the power under our Constitution and law to ignore Congressionally mandated Department, Agencies and approrpiations. It can become a necessary signal to our allies and freedom fighters around the world that there are American leaders fighting for freedom as aggressively as they are in their own countries. It can become the basis of every contact we have with Republican as we also remind them of their solemn oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
That’s what we talked about last night. Watch/listen/read when you can. Thank you to all our paid subscribers who make Hopium and this wonderful community possible. Now, let’s get to work…..
Things We Can Do Right Now - While we have made many recommendations to Democrats in recent months for how to raise our game and fight harder and smarter, let’s focus on our current four recommended sets of actions for how we can best channel our love of country and our frustrations into concrete action today:
1 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to file criminal referrals for Musk and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI and amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own (House Dems began doing this two weeks ago). Encourage them to hold a daily morning press conference to more aggressively challenge Musk’s ransacking of the USG that is making America less prosperous, less healthy, less safe and far less respected in the world.
2 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and Europe - Let your electeds know you are outraged by traitorous Trump’s selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin; and that we cannot accept this level of appeasement of someone who is a clear enemy of America and the West, and certainly not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain; demand that we rejoin our European and NATO allies in support of Zelenskyy and democracy here and everywhere. The country is not with Trump’s embrace of Putin and we must be very loud, very, very loud now. See my new essay on the need to support our allies and not surrender to Putin, and my new interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.
3 - Organize Against The 17 Most Vulnerable Republican House Members - For those of you who live in AZ, CA, CO, IA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WI please start talking to your local orgs - state and local Democratic parties, grassroots groups, traditional Dem allies - about mounting a campaign targeting the most vulnerable 17 Republican House Members to urge them to vote against whatever joint House-Senate reconciliation bill emerges in the coming weeks. We launched this new effort a few weeks ago and while we should be urging all our Senators and Reps to vote against these emerging plans, those of you can work these 17 House Rs have a special role to play in this next phase of the battle over the budget. As we’ve discussed there is a lot of concern in the Republican House about the size of the Medicaid cuts required in the House outline passed last month and we need to keep working it people! (will be updating this in coming days now that the DNC, the House Dems and the state parties have become active in all these districts - as we hoped!!!!! Sign up to attend a new “People’s Town Hall” today)
4 - Keep Calling Attorneys General In The States - Ask them to protect you and your data, tax returns and privacy, and to keep federally mandated monies flowing to your states and communities. For those in the 19 states that brought the successful Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 states should make criminal referrals of Musk/his posse to DOJ/FBI and raise the stakes.
Paid subscribers should self-report their actions today in our daily chat. So inspired by how hard so many of you are working. I want to make a special plea to all Hopium readers in states with Republican Senators - please make your calls, every day. Even 50 to 100 people calling every day in every red state can make a difference. We have hundreds of Hopium subscribers in every state in the country and it’s critical that we all do our part now.
Next, for those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind in addition to our new House Hopium 7:
Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical April Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I’m asking our community to donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party today. The money raised here will make sure Ben has the resources he needs to keep his team in place so they can support this critical statewide race. I know many of you are already deeply involved here - thank you all.
Watch our new discussion with Susan and Ben. Thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $164,000 from over 2,000 of you, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000, $125,000 and $150,000. We are now upping this to a new superduper-stretch goal of $175,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!
Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. You can give to all 7 through a single donation to our new ActBlue page and learn more about this important effort here. We’ve already raised almost $23,000 towards our $50,000 March 31st goal - thank you all!
Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Virginia will be one of the big battlegrounds of the November, 2025 elections and we have a great candidate for Governor, Abigail Spanberger. Watch my interview with Abigail, donate, volunteer, and learn more here. Given how many federal employees live in Virginia, this race is also now on the front lines of the Trump/Musk assault on the federal government. We’ve raised more than $65,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!
Get Anderson Clayton And The NC Dems Fight The GOP’s Attempt To Steal A Supreme Court Seat - Last week we began a campaign to raise $50,000 for Anderson Clayton and the NC Dems. These funds will help the NC Dems get off to a great start in 2025 and help cover the costs of their fight to prevent the Republicans from stealing a Supreme Court seat we won together in 2024. Watch my new interview with Chair Clayton from last week to get an update on the fight over the Supreme Court seat and her plans to win elections and counter Trump this year. We’ve raised $25,000 so far - thank you all!
Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. Two weeks ago we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,400 of you have donated over $101,000 so far. Watch my interview with Ken about what he wants to do with the DNC, and chip in whatever you can to help Ken and the new exciting team at the DNC get off to a strong start!
Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary - In a post from last weekend I reflected back on our work together over these past two years, and made two asks:
1) Commit to bring in one new Hopium subscriber at the your current subscriber level this month. Help us grow this community, and bring our plucky, upbeat, hardworking spirit to more people across the US.
2) Upgrade your subscription to paid or paid to Founding (10% off annual paid subscriptions through March). The resources you provide allows me to work full time at Hopium and keeps our community vibrant, growing and making all sorts of good trouble every day. Gift and group subscriptions are also a great way to grow our community!
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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