Do More, Worry Less, and Let's Get to 55

First Quarter Filing Deadline Is Tomorrow - Pls support Biden-Harris, Ruben Gallego and Anderson Clayton today!

Happy Saturday all. Still on vacation, still got some good stuff for you today…..

• Why I Am Optimistic About Winning This November - Recent posts, pods and video presentations on the 2024 election

• Upcoming Events - Our Spring calendar is coming together (new registration links available - sign up today!)

• Hopium Building Blocks - This week I’m sharing work that helped inform the creation of Hopium a year ago. Here are the five posts:

  • The 50 Year Strategy (2007)

  • Forward or Backward? (2012)

  • The Case for Optimism (2017)

  • Build Back Better (2020)

  • My First Hopium Post (2023)

Stay focused my friends. Do not get distracted. Remember:

Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong, unified, and winning elections all across the country.

And they have Trump.

In ever way imaginable, when it comes to the 2024 elections, I would much rather be us than them.

Do More, Worry Less and Let’s Get to 55 - Two days after starting Hopium a year ago I posted a new, comprehensive political analysis, Get to 55: Expanding Our Coalition, The Youth Opportunity. Drawing from our strong performance in 2022, I argued this election cycle is one of opportunity for us, one where, due to their escalating extremism, we could imagine growing and expanding our coalition, and “getting to 55%” in the Presidential election. It is a cycle where more possible for us, where we could take things from them, geographically and demographically, and make this election a clear repudiation of the terrible danger MAGA had become.

And is what we’ve seen since. We took away a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat in April of 2023, and ended the rancid redistricting there which made the state something other than a democracy. In May we took away Colorado Springs and Jacksonville, two of the largest Republican-held cites in America. We then got to 57% in two Ohio ballot initiative, and took away its six week abortion ban. We then took away the Virginia Assembly from Glenn Youngkin, and did severe damage to the right’s fantasy that a 15 week abortion ban was an escape hatch from Dobbs. We gained seats in New Jersey, Andy Beshear grew his winning margin in Kentucky, and in more than 30 state House and Senate special elections across the US we overperformed our 2020 results by more than 5 points. 2023 was a blue wave year where we made gains all across the country and just repeatedly took things away from them.

We are now seeing this same post-Dobbs Dem overperformance and GOP struggle show up 2024 too. We took away that Orlando state house seat in January; took away NY-3, bigly; both RFK and Dean Phillips failed spectacularly against Joe Biden in the primary; buoyed by our grassroots, we are raising lots of money, building a strong general election campaign and more broadly together are building the most powerful political machine we’ve ever had. And Trump keeps underperforming public polling when voters vote; Republicans are struggling to raise money, and the RNC appears broken; there is unprecedented and growing opposition to Trump inside the Republican Party, and his party has splintered; GOP House Members are abandoning ship in droves- literally just quitting and walking away. We are strong and united. They are weak and divided. Joe Biden is a good President, the country is better off. Donald Trump is the ugliest political thing any of us have ever seen.

So in this spirit of growth and expansion, we are focusing on three critical projects right now - Biden-Harris, Ruben Gallego and Anderson Clayton and the NC Dem Party. I hope you will give today and tomorrow to help them pad their coffers for the critical end of quarter filing deadline which becomes an important public test of their strength. This community went to work in 2023 in all these elections we discuss above; we worked hard for Tom Keen and Tom Suozzi, this year; and have been working hard for these three projects too. I am making one more ask for we need to stay on offense, keep expanding our map and our coalition, and keep taking stuff away from them. These three places are the most important places I think you can donate too today, and hope you will take a step to help us win and get to 55 this November.

Here’s a new Biden ad inviting Haley voters into the nascent, broad, pro-democracy Biden coalition (great to see this ambition and commitment to offense, growth, expansion):

Donate to and join the Biden-Harris campaign - This is very important. The general election has begun and it’s time to get on board the Biden-Harris train. Please donate whatever amount you can - $5, $10 - just to get started.

So far we’ve raised $177,000 from 2,100 of you for Biden Harris - thank you all!

Make an early investment in North Carolina - North Carolina is our most important 2024 battleground expansion state. Please donate today!

For more on why I think North Carolina is so important watch my in-depth interview with Anderson Clayton, the dynamic new NC Dem Party chair; learn about the extremists running statewide in North Carolina this year and why they give us a great opportunity to grow, expand and flip NC blue; and hear Anderson give us an update on her work and the impact our investments are having there.

So far we’ve raised $136,000 from over 1,700 of you for Anderson and the NC Dems - thank you all!

The Biden campaign is using all this early money they are raising to not just try to flip North Carolina but are now making meaningful investments in Florida too - this is what early money can do.

Help Ruben Gallego Win Arizona - Join me in helping Ruben Gallego in his campaign to become the next Senator from Arizona. The polls are encouraging there, and this is a very critical 2024 battleground state - must win Biden-Harris state, must win Senate, two House pick up opportunities (and maybe the state house too). Because Senator Sinema stayed in for so long, Ruben is a bit behind where he should be financially and organizationally, and needs our help today. Watch my recent interview with Ruben, and please donate today! We have already raised over $98,000 from over 1,400 of you - thank you all!

Spread Hopium - Encourage people in your networks to become a Hopium subscriber. Our goal is to get to 50,000 overall subscribers by March 31st (we’re at 49,000 today), and thanks to all of you we’ve already hit our goal of 6,000 paid subscribers! With your help we can hit our big subscriber goal, keep growing our community, and keep bringing the upbeat, data-filled analysis here to more and more people!

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