Biden Leads in 2 New Polls, Raise The Flag, Super Tuesday Tonight, SOTU Thursday

Welcome New Subscribers!/Hopium Paid Subscriber Gathering Tomorrow Night

Happy Tuesday all! Got a few things for you today:

Biden Leads in 2 New Polls - Yes, there are polls showing Trump ahead. But there are also these other polls released in the past week: (Biden-Trump):

• 44%-43% - Morning Consult (new today, 5 pt Biden gain in past month)

• 43%-42% - TIPP (new today, 3 pt Biden gain from last month’s poll)

• 44%-44% - Economist/YouGov

• 36%-36% - AP/NORC

• 40%-40% - Impact Research/GSG battleground state poll (link)

Morning Consult’s just released weekly tracking poll found something that we’ve been discussing as the likely scenario this spring - that as the campaigns turn on, and it becomes clear it is Biden-Trump, a big chunk of Biden’s wandering base will come home. We will then we have a campaign to go get the rest and hopefully go beyond it and get to 55.

Here’s Morning Consult this morning:

Biden retakes lead from Trump: Biden leads Trump, the likeliest Republican presidential nominee for 2024, by 1 percentage point (44% to 43%) in our latest national tracking survey. It’s Biden’s first lead over Trump since early January, and is driven by coalescence among the voters who backed him last time around: 85% of Biden 2020 voters say they’d vote for him if the election were today, the largest share since early September.

As I keep writing what the polls are finding is a close, competitive election. Trump does not definitively lead. He is a far weaker candidate than in 2020. We should not red wave this election as we did 2022. We know from public and private polling that when voters are informed about Biden’s accomplishments, his numbers go up. When voters are informed about Trump’s awfulness his numbers go down. Consumer sentiment is rising, the economy is remains historically strong. Since Dobbs we’ve been winning elections all across the country and Republicans have struggled. Together, we’ve built the most powerful grassroots machine the Democratic Party has ever had. For all these reasons, and the many I discuss below, I am deeply optimistic about winning this November. For remember:

Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong and winning elections all across the country. And they have Trump, the most unfit person to ever run for President in our all history.

Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope elections will go well, we do the work to make it so. Our work, together, and the work of millions of other proud patriots across the country, is what is pushing Democratic performance in election after election to the upper end of what’s possible. If we keep our heads down and keep doing the work we should have the election we all want to have this November. Let’s raise the flag - for freedom, for democracy, for America - and go win this thing together (please watch):

Election Days GOTV Calls for Rudy Salas - So grateful to those who stepped up there past few days and made calls for Rudy Salas in CA-22. Hopium community member Jerry Hertz posted this in the paid subscriber chat Sunday:

Pleased to see lots of people at one of today’s phone banks for Rudy Salas say in the chat “I also listen (read, love, subscribe) to Hopium. “. It’s great to be a part of this community. Thank you

If you have even an hour today, there are two ways to help Rudy close strong:

• Grassroots Dem HQ and DCCC Phonebank

• Bay Area Coalition Phonebank and Background Info On Why Calls Are Needed

We can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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. Here are a few things beyond making calls for Rudy Salas that 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.

Our community has already raised over $90,000 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.

Our community has already raised $78,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Thank Joe Biden For Being A Good President - As we get ready for the State Of The Union this Thursday, our friends at Markers for Democracy have launched an inspired campaign to send post cards to Joe Biden thanking him for being a good President. Our friends Ellen Bender and Susan Wagner sent this to note to me:

In this moment of media fixation over President Biden (see,e.g.,@ezraklein) the postcard community is turning our Sharpies to a very special campaign:  Markers For Democracy has launched a campaign #postcardstobiden encouraging people to send the President a postcard expressing the fact that he has been an excellent President, you appreciate what he has done for the country and you want him to serve a second term. Please encourage others to do the same. Feel free to use your own language and send a postcard letting the President know you have his back.  Postcards should be addressed to President Biden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500

You can learn more about the amazing work Postcards for Democracy does here; and you can order cards at their pro-shop or by going to Etsy and search "postcards to voters”. Catch James Carville talking about the importance of postcarding on his podcast, minute 9, and below is an examples of cards that have already gone to President Biden. For all of you who are involved in organizations across the US please consider adopting this campaign. Let’s let the big guy know how grateful we are for his leadership in a time of enormous challenge, and how excited we are to help him win a second term.

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’re at 46,000 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.

My New Republic Essay, “4 Things Biden Should Do Now” - I contributed an essay to a recent pre-State Of The Union package of essays in the New Republic. My essay made 4 recommendations to the big guy. Here are the two regarding ways his argument and agenda can evolve in the coming months:

Anchor the Second Term Around Countering Climate Change and the Fight for Democracy.

If the primary job of the first term was about successfully getting America to the other side of Covid, the second term should be about mobilizing unprecedented resources around tackling the next two existential challenges of our time–countering climate change and accelerating the energy transition from fossil fuels, and ensuring that freedom and democracy prevail here in the United States and everywhere.

The president should talk directly and forcefully to the American people about the existential nature of these dual challenges, particularly the rise of what is perhaps the most serious threat we’ve ever seen to the American-led, rules-based order; and he should prepare Americans for what could be years or even decades of hot and cold conflict with authoritarians at home and abroad. The president began that process this year with his compelling speech near Valley Forge in early January.

As part that mobilization, we will need to keep our economy strong and prosperous, persistently proving that democratic capitalism remains the best system for human advancement; develop a long overdue national strategy to restore integrity to our daily discourse, making it far harder for authoritarian forces to manipulate and control speech in open societies; build greater government-wide institutional capacity to advance pro-democracy initiatives here and across the world; and be direct in asking the American people, as President Kennedy once did, to become active partners in ensuring we prevail in these deeply consequential struggles in the coming decades.

Offer a Big Reform/Clean Up Washington Agenda, and a Strategy to Raise Life Expectancy.

The president should commit to making progress in at least two other areas during his second term—cleaning up a city and a democracy that have been weakened by corruption and illiberalism of all kinds, and raising American life expectancy so it is again at the level of peer nations’.

I think Joe Biden should promise to clean up the city he has so long been a part of. Among the things we can tackle are the influence of foreign money, the need to raise ethical standards at the Supreme Court, eliminating the debt ceiling and the ability to shut down the government, and the wild abuse of Senate holds on nominations. Perhaps Biden could set up a commission to make broader recommendations on how to modernize and reform a city desperately in need of it.

The president faces a similar opportunity to address an unacceptable decline in American life expectancy in recent years. Life expectancy continues to decline, and we’ve fallen behind peer nations. We should use this as a sign that a new emphasis on the health and well-being of Americans is needed, and the president should commit to reversing this decline in his second term. All ideas need to be on the table—better mental health and addiction recovery programs, more aggressive steps to stop the flow of foreign drugs into the country, better gun laws, the restoration of women’s reproductive freedom and addressing unacceptable levels of maternal mortality, fighting to restore trust in vaccines and the broader concept of public health.

Joe Biden has largely risen to the challenges presented to him and followed through on the promises he made in 2020. Now he has two more important challenges he must meet—build a campaign that can go big, unleash the patriotism and love of country that is driving Democratic politics today and make 2024 a clear repudiation of MAGA; and give us a second term that ensures that the opportunities we’ve all had are there for our kids and grandkids. As successful as he has been, it is possible that Joe Biden’s most important work still lies ahead of him.

You can read the rest of my essay here, and feedback is encouraged. Be sure to make plans to watch The State Of The Union live on Thursday, and as we discussed yesterday, get ready to be part of the team that sells Joe Biden’s message to our networks in the days to come.

Why I’m Optimistic About Winning This November - A round up of recent postings, essays and appearances. Lots to chew on her over the weekend:

Hopium Analysis/Us - “All of us have a role to play,” Democrats Really Like Their President, Biden Breaks 80% in Michigan, Trump Continues To Struggle, Biden’s Successful Presidency Is Leaving Rs With Nothing To Run On, Moving On From The Trump Trials, Notes On The NYT Poll

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 - PoliticsGirl, MeidasTouch, Daily Kos’ The Brief 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.

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

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

• 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.

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