Great New GDP Numbers, New Pod w/Carville and Hunt, More Good Polling for Biden

GDP growth in q2 comes in at 2.4%, blowing past estimates!

Toplines: Dems are having a good summer, the Rs bad summer is about to get a lot worse, and every day there is more evidence that Ron DeSantis is a malevolent extremist.

David Pepper today at 1pm EST - Hope you will join us today at 1pm EST for a live discussion with former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper. We will be talking the all important upcoming elections in Ohio and his new book, Saving Democracy. You can RSVP here and learn more about David here. A recording of the event will be here on Hopium later this afternoon. Join us - will be a good one!

Catch me on Carville’s Politics War Room podcast - Yesterday I sat down with James Carville and Al Hunt for their terrific weekly podcast. We had a great conversation about US politics today - think you will enjoy it. Check it out here. My July Hopium political briefing is also available for viewing, as is our newly updated With Democrats Things Get Better presentation.

If you like any of these discussions, please share them with your networks, and help spread our message so full of Hopium with others.

More good economic news - GDP growth comes in at 2.4% in the second quarter, higher than expected! Visit here for more on the strong performance of the US economy under Biden, and why we need to be doing everything we can to tell this story through our networks. Loud and proud people!

Large sample, independent polls In July, Biden-Trump (via 538) -

• Monmouth 47-40

• Quinnipiac 49-44

• YouGov/Yahoo 47-43

• Morning Consult 43-41 (new this week)

• YouGov/Economist 44-40 (new this week)

• Ipsos/Reuters 37-35

Averaging these together gives Biden a 4 point lead. A late June high-quality NBC News poll had Biden up 4, and a new AARP poll of battleground House districts has Biden up 4, 47-43. Sure feels like a 3-4 point lead now for Biden, with many of these tracks showing Biden gaining ground in the past month. Good news all around.

From The WaPo’s Greg Sargent’s new column “Striking new data about young voters should alarm Trump and the GOP” -

Something is happening among young voters in America — even if, to paraphrase the old Bob Dylan song, we don’t know what it is.

Consider: Youth turnout exploded during the 2018 midterm elections under President Donald Trump. Then in 2020, energized opposition to Trump among young voters was critical to his defeat. And in the 2022 midterms, surging youth participation helped fend off the widely predicted “red wave.” Even some Republicans fear that expanding youth populations in swing states pose a long-term threat to the GOP.

New data supplied to me by the Harvard Youth Poll sheds light on the powerful undercurrents driving these developments. Young voters have shifted in a markedly progressive direction on multiple issues that are deeply important to them: Climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights.

The GOP’s shocking levels of unpopularity - I don’t think our political commentary focuses enough on just how unpopular the GOP is now, how degraded their brand is. It’s an important part of why we keep doing so well in elections - people are really not into them. I’ll be doing a bit more work on this in the coming weeks but look at this Civiqs graph - Rs at 28-62 fav/unfav, -34. Dems are 38-55, -17. With 18-34 year olds Rs are 18-74 (-56!!!!), and with Hispanics 19-71 (-52!!!!!). This level of unpopularity is why we need to be working to get to 55 - there are voters on the table for us to go get in the months ahead.

Keep working hard all - Simon