Biden Campaign Ramps Up, Optimism About 2024, Why Trump Should Be Barred From Running
“Our message is clear and simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does."
Biden Campaign Ramps Up - The 2024 Biden-Harris re-election campaign has begun. Here we go people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President Biden is scheduled to travel to Valley Forge, Pa., on Saturday to give remarks on the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as his campaign attempts — at the start of the election year — to take a more aggressive posture toward Donald Trump and center the election around a fight for democracy.
Biden will speak near a site where a group of militias gathered to form a coalition to fight for democracy — and where George Washington established headquarters during the Revolutionary War — as a way to invoke the core theme of his presidential campaign some 250 years later.
On Monday, Biden is scheduled to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were fatally shot by a white supremacist in 2015.
The two events — as well as a trip to South Carolina by Vice President Harris on Saturday — signal a reinvigorated campaign from the likely Democratic ticket just as Republicans begin their nomination process with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15……
“Our message is clear and simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on Tuesday.
Senior aides to Biden’s campaign outlined several new efforts to start the year, including ads that will begin running centered on Biden’s speech on Saturday and an attempt to illustrate in a more stark way the choices voters will face in November.
Biden has in recent weeks started speaking more directly about Trump, but often during fundraisers that are not seen by average voters. His campaign is choosing to escalate that message more directly in a symbolic setting on the anniversary of the insurrection, as a way to draw the contrast.
“On January 6, 2021, we witnessed a very different vision of America, one defined by revenge, retribution and a rebuke of our very democracy,” Rodriguez said. “It was the first time in our nation’s history that a president tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”
This is very welcome news. It is time to get to work. Here’s a crib sheet the White House released this week:
“As We Head Into 2024, In Every Way Possible, I’d Much Rather Be Us Than Them” - It’s been a remarkable few weeks for our core 2024 narrative:
Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong and winning elections across the US. And they have Trump.
Last week MSNBC digital featured my op-ed, Biden’s 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize, which advanced our narrative. President Biden talked about one of my 2024 Hopium posts at a DNC fundraiser right before Christmas. I took our big, optimistic argument into MSNBC interviews with Lawrence O’Donnell, Willie Geist on Morning Joe, and with Alex Witt on Saturday. A clip of that interview, created by Christopher Webb, follows:
My insights into the 2024 election have also been featured in recent weeks in articles in NBC News, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post column, Politico, Politico again, USA Today, USA Today again, Yahoo News, Vanity Fair, New Republic, Puck, Newsweek, The Hill, The Hill again, Vox, National Journal and the Washington Examiner.
Here’s a portion of an interview I did with Politico on 2024, and the need for Democrats to realize the general election is likely to begin in weeks, not months:
Simon - Trump is going to win Iowa by very large numbers on Jan. 15. I don’t know that all of us have come to terms with the fact that the [Republican] primary is going to end in a few weeks.
We have to get going. The Biden campaign would be wise to turn on fully, to get ready for the general election and to start giving Democrats all across the country something to do.
Once that process begins, two important things will happen inside the Democratic family: One is that many of the people wandering from the Biden coalition will come home. The second is that it will quiet all the internal chatter because we’ll start channeling our anxiety about the election into concrete action.
What does ‘turn itself on’ actually mean?
It’s about having the tempo of knowing that you’re in the fight 24/7. And the engagement with Trump will have to become more direct. He’s going to turn to the general election in a few weeks and start attacking and we have to be ready. We’re going to be in a general election posture far earlier than we’ve been in any recent election.
Are you still the “the most optimistic Dem online”?
I’m actually much more optimistic about Joe Biden winning next year than I was about our chances in 2022. Joe Biden has been a good president. He’s going to have a strong case for reelection. The Democratic Party is winning elections all over the country. And they have Trump.
Trump is the worst candidate to run for president in modern American history. I don’t know how you dress up Donald Trump and make him look like a serious presidential candidate.
It sounds like you think Biden needs to go more negative on Trump.
It’s time to make our case and to remind voters about the things that Trump has done that I think make it virtually impossible for him to win the election next year.
You feel good about 2024. But what explains Biden’s low approval rating?
There’s no question that some sizable chunk of our coalition is wandering right now. It’s not unusual a year before the election.
What I think is going to happen is that a very large chunk of our wandering coalition is going to come home and we will be up by three or four points in the election. But we won’t know that until we turn the campaign on and actually start talking to voters and making it clear that it’s time to saddle up and get going.
Yes, it is time to saddle up peeps and get going!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our Electoral And Political Work in 2024 - Please Volunteer, Donate, Promote! - The 2023 elections are behind us, and 2024 has officially begun! We kick off 2024 with a really important Florida House special election in just two weeks. Please sign up for a volunteer shift or donate today, and thanks to all of you who have already taken an action - I know many of you are already hard at work.
Here are the projects and campaigns I’m recommending right now:
Tom Keen FL HD-35 - Jan 16th Special Election - we need to start 2024 with a win in this winnable pick up opportunity in one of the most important states in the county
Tom Suozzi NY-3 - Feb 13th Special Election for Santos Congressional seat - know many are already hard at work here - thank you!
North Carolina Democratic Party - Ongoing, top 2024 battleground Presidential pickup opportunity. Watch our interview with dynamic NC Chair Anderson Clayton - well worth your time
Spreading Hopium in 2024 - Help me extend our community’s reach
White House Goes On Offense On The Border - In a Tweet this morning WH Comms Director Ben LaBolt wrote: “President Biden has requested $13.6 billion for border enforcement & migration management, increasing the Border Patrol by 1,300, judge teams by 375 and asylum officers by 1600 to expedite the screening process, and critical drug detection technology.”
A Politico story out this morning explains the new WH strategy:
The Biden administration is attempting to flip the blame for the migrant crisis at the southern border onto Republicans.
In anticipation of Speaker Mike Johnson heading to the U.S. southern border on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement accusing House GOPers of ducking the chance to address the issue they’ve been attacking.
“Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement first obtained by POLITICO ahead of two days of Republican border visits. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”
Let’s hope all this engagement on this challenging issue leads to a border, Ukraine, Israel deal in the coming days. It is disappointing that Republicans are heading to the border today rather being here in Washington working to get a deal done. As I wrote yesterday, Republicans left town in December without passing Ukraine/Israel funding, getting a border deal done, confirming dozens of senior State Department appointees in a time of enormous global challenge and having a 2024 budget in place 3 months into the fiscal year. It was an extraordinary abdication of responsibility, and a reminder of how truly awful and dangerous the MAGA-era Republican Party has become.
Dr. Timothy Snyder on Trump, Insurrection and the 14th Amendment - I found this recent post from Dr. Timothy Snyder helpful:
Donald Trump cannot be a candidate for any state or federal office in the United States of America. Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution makes this plain. No office-holding insurrectionist can return to office. The language is clear, and the facts of his case are not in dispute.
The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled to this effect, and the United States Supreme Court is now called upon to review its finding (in Anderson vs. Griswold). In my last post, I addressed arguments against the Constitution that I heard or read in the Midwest over the holidays. In this essay, I address the anti-Constitutional discourse that appears in the media: that the Constitution should be displaced by the fears of people who appear on television.
This form of opposition to the Constitution poses as expertise. It takes the form of advice to the Court: find some way to allow Trump to be on the ballot, because otherwise people will be upset. Because we are used to hearing endless conversations about politics on television, where everyone seems to be a political advisor, it can seem normal to reduce sections of the Constitution to talking points. But we must pause and consider.
In fact, rejecting the legal order in favor of what seems to be politically safe at a given moment is just about the most dangerous move that can be made. It amounts to advocating that we shift from constitutional government to an insurrectionary regime. Indeed, it amounts to participating in that shift, while not taking responsibility for doing so. Let me try to spell this out.
In advising the Court to keep Trump on the ballot, political commentators elevate their own fears about others' resentment above the Constitution. But the very reason we have a Constitution is to handle fear and resentment. To become a public champion of your own own fears and others' resentments is to support an insurrectionary regime.
The purpose of the insurrection clause of the Constitution (the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment) is not to encourage insurrections! If we publicly say that that Supreme Court should disregard it because we fear insurrections, we are making insurrections more likely. We are telling Americans that to undermine constitutional rule they must only intimate that they might be violent.
To advocate pitchfork rulings is to endorse regime change; to issue pitchfork rulings is to announce regime change.
Our message is clear and simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does.
2024 is finally here, and we have a lot of work to do. Excited and proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
Simon, your ears should have been burning over the holidays as I (and many others, I suspect) recommended Hopium Chronicles to family and friends.
One of my wishes for 2024 is that more Democrats in the House and Senate will considerably step up their game in praising Team Biden-Harris. This morning, I wrote my Congressman Jerry Nadler: "Over the holidays, I received your 2023 End of Year newsletter touting your legislative accomplishments but I was dismayed you didn't credit President Biden's remarkable leadership for any of these; in fact, his name is no where to be found on either side of the piece. I'd argue your silence (and that of too many of your colleagues) in failing to trumpet President Biden's extraordinary successes is one of the reasons his poll numbers aren't better. Please be a team player, loud and proud, in supporting Team Biden-Harris - it's in all of our collective interests."
The most important thing we can do in the election of 2024 is to educate young people about the importance of voting, democracy, and to personalize that message. Young people, are increasingly informed by social media, filled with miss information, so it is up to us to correct that. Using humor is helpful, making it personal is even more important! Register young people, talk to young people, explain how losing democracy will affect them on a personal level, and start now!