Dem Party And Our Electeds - Getting Louder And Going 24/7/365, DNC Candidate Forum This Saturday, Trump Goes Full On Authoritarian

Hopium Paid Subscriber Gathering This Wednesday at 7pm ET

Jan 07, 2025

Good afternoon all. I had a morning post almost done when we started getting all sorts of news - Cannon blocking the Smith report, Trump filing an emergency injunction to stop the Friday sentencing for his 34 felonies, Meta joining the MAGA movement and the many different story lines from Trump’s batshit crazy press conference. For time and space purposes I will address these new developments tomorrow, but do want to say one thing now - Trump’s repeated threats against the sovereign nations of Canada, Greenland (part of Denmark, an EU Member and one of the 12 original NATO Members) and Panama are a direct attack on the post WWII American-led global order. Our support of Ukraine has been a means of protecting the foundational principle of that order - the unquestioned sovereignty of all nations - one that Russia has violated by its invasion. Trump’s clear flouting of this foundational principle of the modern world - not ruling out direct military seizure, like Russia in Ukraine - could be interpreted as his walking away from this global system that has made America prosperous, safe and free. It is also a way of providing cover and justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and future acts by autocrats around the world. Coupled with Musk’s escalating attacks on the pro-Western, pro-US governments of Canada, Germany and the UK the new Trump regime seems hellbent on helping Russia and China forge a post-American global system, one built on force and dominion and not freedom and democracy. Here’s the clip:

Friends, this is ugly, ugly stuff and he isn’t even President yet. This is going to be a hard, hard four years. We need to prepare ourselves.

There are three state legislative special elections today in Virginia - good luck to all who are working on these races today. We didn’t get involved in these races as I wanted to give folks a bit more time but we will be gearing up our 2025-2026 electoral program soon (read more about our 2023-2024 work here). We have made one endorsement so far - Abigail Spanberger for Governor of Virginia. You can watch my recent interview with her here, learn more and donate too. She is a great candidate and this will be one the big, high-profile races this fall.

There will be a DNC candidate forum this Saturday at 11am. You will be able to watch it live here, and learn more about who the candidates are for each major office here. The forum will be broken down into four separate events:

Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution will moderate the forums for Chair candidates.
Loretta Boniti of Spectrum News 1 will moderate the forum for Vice Chair candidates.
Matthew Choi of the Texas Tribune will moderate the forum for Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Participation candidates.
Jeffrey Schweers of the Orlando Sentinel will moderate the forums for Secretary, Treasurer, and National Finance Chair candidates.

I will send along more info as it becomes available. The NYT had a good article on the Chair’s race this past weekend (link unlocked), and be sure to watch my recent interviews with the two leading candidates for Chair, Ben Wikler and Ken Martin. In my post this Thursday I will be updating my working list of 2024 takeways and go forward recommendations, but today I send along something from a few weeks back that is driving our work to fight Trump’s unacceptable 4 - we simply must change, now, how we view the day to day battle for information superiority with Trump and the right. A newly revitalized and re-imagined Democratic Party has a big role to play in what comes next:

Re-Imagining The Roles Of The DNC, Elected Officials And Grassroots Dems In The Info Wars - As we’ve discussed since the very first day of Hopium, our family has to learn how to be loud not just in our muscular campaigns but every day, 24/7/365. We need to work together to close what I call the loudness gap with the right. We’ve talked here about the need to grow pro-democracy media organizations like Crooked Media, COURIER Newsroom, MeidasTouch, Resolute Square, Deep State Radio and fellow Substackers like Robert Hubbell, Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder. We’ve talked about the role we all have to play in working our networks each day, getting louder, and becoming more accomplished information warriors for our democracy. Today, I want to talk another piece of a new loudness strategy - the roles of our party committees and elected officials.
First, the DNC and other state parties must become more like MeidasTouch. The DNC has to become a central communications hub of the new opposition, and produce high quality, modern, social and YouTube content everyday both advancing our ideas and leaders, and challenging theirs. As some have mentioned here, elements of the social-based KamalaHQ should be brought into the DNC, and large gatherings of Dems along the lines of White Dudes For Harris should become a regular thing. Our party infrastructure simply has to take on a greater comms responsibility in the 20 months outside of the last 4 months of elections every two years, and large donors in our family should support this strategic evolution.
Next, the relationship between Democrats across the country and our big campaigns and party committees must change. The millions of us who gave and volunteered need to be treated like partners in the fight not just donors to the cause. There has to be a more respectful information based relationship between us, where our campaigns and parties start treating us not only like ATMs but also like proud patriots, information warriors and willing amplifiers. In this networked age we must see the 4-5-6m people who gave this past cycle as a vast information network to be deployed to counter the right’s information superiority. Imagine the Senate/House/DNC doing a training on how to understand and talk about Trump’s tariffs or his mass deportation plans with a million Dems over Zoom? Creating a true and robust center-left amplification network has to be an immediate, 2025 goal.
Finally, our elected officials, every single one of them, at all levels of government, need to get louder in every way possible every day. There has to be a revolution in how we see the role of an elected official, both on the official side and on the campaign side. Electeds need to not only govern and legislate, but also should see themselves as influencers and info warriors with enormous platforms to help shape the information environment every day, 24/7/365. Simply, they have to work it as hard as they can, every day, using all the tools at their disposal.
Party leaders should work to create a new baseline of understanding of how people get their information these days to help every person in this process become more effective. Classes and training should be required for all electeds and their staffs, and best practices shared.
In the last Congress we saw examples of where we need to go. House Members like AOC, Eric Swalwell, Jamie Raskin, Maxwell Frost, Jeff Jackson, Jasmine Crockett and Jerad Moskowitz were effective at creating “hot moments’ which broke through the noise and went viral. These kinds of tactics are going to become far more important now in this period of opposition.
The world has changed and we need to change with it or be left behind.

Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg

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