Biden Breaks 80% in Michigan, Trump Continues To Struggle

Marianne Williamson, who dropped out a month ago, beat Dean Phillips last night!

Happy Wednesday all. A few things for you today:

In Michigan, Biden Keeps Cruising, Trump Continues To Struggle - In my post yesterday, I argued that the opposition to Biden’s foreign policy inside the Democratic Party was very limited, but intense. And that’s what we saw last night. Biden broke 80%, and for all the hype Uncommitted got to a very modest 13%, just 2 points higher than Uncommitted got against Obama in 2012. Biden is very popular in the Democratic Party, and the opposition he has is very narrow and limited. But it’s there, and Biden world has work to do to bring everyone along, as all campaigns do. It’s doable work in my view, the work we have to do, well within the normal debates and dissensions that happen in these very large, big-tent parties we have in America.

Let’s review some data. 100,000 people voted uncommitted in Michigan last night. About 100,000 Arab Americans voted for Biden in Michigan in 2020. Let’s assume that 50,000 of those people stay home this November. That’s a little less than 1% of the total vote this fall. Can we make it up other places? Can we work really hard to get number down? Yes and yes. I characterize what’s happening right now as more of a challenge to Biden than a threat. But we have work to do.

I think the work Trump has to do is much harder. The opposition to him in his party is much greater, and we have data now from the early GOP primary states showing a sizeable chunk of Republicans are open to voting for Biden this fall. In my view something broke inside the GOP with Dobbs in the spring of 2022. At that moment the GOP became too ugly, too menacing even for many Republican voters. And in all these elections since the Republicans have struggled. They struggled in the battlegrounds in 2022; struggled in elections throughout 2023; struggled in Orlando last month, in NY-3 two weeks ago and Trump is struggling in these early states.

I talked about Trump’s underperformance of public polling in the first 3 primary states in this post from over the weekend. Let’s look at what happened in Michigan:

• Trump is leading in all national polls against Haley by over 60 points

• The last 2 public polls in Michigan had Trump up over Haley by more than 50 points

• He won last night by 42 points. It’s a similar level of underperformance that we saw in IA, NH, SC.

As in all these elections since Dobbs, when it comes time to actually vote, Trump just keeps struggling and underperforming.

As I detailed in this Monday post, Trump’s problems right now go way beyond these ongoing performance issues:

• He’s spending more than he’s taking in, Haley outraised him last month, the RNC is broke, the Party is in a messy leadership transition, dozens of party leaders in critical battleground states have been indicted, several state parties have functionally collapsed, House Rs are abandoning ship

• Trump and his party are far more dangerous and extreme than they were in in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 - elections they lost. The IVF fiasco has reminded all of us that for them Dobbs was just the beginning of their assault on women, and reproductive rights and freedoms. It’s devastating for them

• Trump has serially betrayed the country, and he and his family have corruptly taken more money from foreign governments than any political family in US history

• As I wrote recently, due to Biden’s successful Presidency Trump’s core attacks against Biden are evaporating, leaving him with very little to run on other than his madness

• He keeps losing in court, badly, and we know from polling 20%-30% of Republicans view these legal challenges/his criminality as a potential reason to abandon him in November. He and Rudy now owe $700m!!!!!

• Trump himself is diminished. His appearances on the stump are far more erratic, delusional, distributing. His color is far more orange, and in general he is far more freakish and buffoonish than he has ever been. It really does feel like he is descending deeper into madness.

We cannot forget for one moment what Trump’s agenda for the country is:

He wants Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. The economy to crash. Women, people of color to lose more freedoms and rights. 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 long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to get pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.

Here’s my appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell last night talking about the Michigan results:

Here’s a clip from my discussion with MeidasTouch last night:

And here’s the former Australian Prime Minister, Malcom Turnbull, describing how Trump behaved around Putin - “he’s like the 12 year old boy who goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team”

Keep working hard all. We have a big election to win this year.

March Event Dates - Three events on the books so far in March:

• Fri, March 1, 1pm EST - Hopium Founding Members Get Together W/Simon

• Wed, March 6, 7pm EST - Hopium Paid Subscriber Monthly Gathering - Register

• Thur, March 7th - State Of The Union Address - Be Sure to Watch!!!!!

• Wed March 13, 7pm EST - Hopium Community-Wide Monthly Gathering - Register

Free subscribers can upgrade their membership to join these additional gatherings by clicking here.

Why I’m Optimistic About Winning This November - A round up of recent postings, essays and appearances. Lots of Hopium in here.

Hopium Analysis/Us - Why I Am Optimistic About Winning This November, Biden’s Successful Presidency Is Leaving Rs With Nothing To Run On, Biden’s Chances Are Much Stronger Than People Realize (MSNBC), 4 Things Biden Should Do Now (New Republic)

Hopium Analysis/Them - More Performance Problems For Trump and MAGA in South Carolina, Trump Is Not Strong, Or Winning - No Red Waving 2024 Please, Coming To Terms With Russia’s Penetration of Trump and The GOP, MAGA Descends Into Madness

Hopium Events/Appearances - Our Monthly Hopium Gathering With Special Guest Tom Suozzi, With Democrats, Things Get Better, Appearances on PoliticsGirl and The Ezra Klein Show

The Most Powerful Democratic Political Machine We’ve Ever Seen - Read my recent post on the powerful political machine we building together, and let’s just keep staring at this jaw-dropping data from the Suozzi campaign:

In the space of five weeks people knocked on over 150,000 doors, made over 2 million phone calls, and wrote hundreds of thousands of postcards. Our campaign estimates that every Democrat household in the NY-03 received, on average, five handwritten postcards.

Let’s Do More, Worry Less - Here at Hopium we strive to channel all this worry and anxiety we have about our current moment into concrete action - do more, worry less - as we say here. I try to give you a bit of direction about where to channel your work by endorsing campaigns and projects, and providing you information to help you become a more effective information warrior for your democracy. Together we just made a big difference in NY-3, and if you are looking for ways to help right now here are three things you can do today:

Donate and join the Biden-Harris campaign - This is very important. The campaign comms and field operations are gearing up and it’s critical you receive info from the campaign every day, and start thinking about how you are going to be part of this effort as it expands. Please donate whatever amount you can - $5, $10 - just to get started.

We’ve already raised over $79,000 everyone for Biden Harris - thank you!

Make an early investment in North Carolina - North Carolina is our most important 2024 expansion state. Please consider donating today. For more on why I think North Carolina is so important watch my interview with Anderson Clayton, the dynamic new NC Democratic Party Chair.

We’ve already raised $61,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Spread Hopium - Encourage people in your networks to become a Hopium subscriber. Our goal is to get to 50,000 subscribers by March 31st (we are at 44,000 today). With your help we can hit our goal, grow our community and bring the upbeat, data-filled analysis here to more and more people.

Here’s Governor Newsom talking about the need to “worry less, do more” on Meet The Press this weekend:

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