Good afternoon/morning all. Got a few things for you today:
Fighting Trump’s Outrageous 4 - Still asking folks to call their Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with Trump’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz and Robert Kennedy, and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations. We should be demanding that our party leaders do everything they can to block them, and build a national campaign to encourage other Americans to join us. We may not win, but we can grow our networks and power, perhaps weaken Trump for what I think were serious mistakes, and not let such outrageous actions go unchallenged. While weary, heartbroken and desperately in need of rest, we still have to fight everyone. Do what you can. I’m going to keep fighting.
I think Trump erred, dramatically, with these reckless nominations. They are creating lots of negative noise in his early days, and tension in his own party:
Matt Gaetz is unlikely to make it, and Hegseth is starting to run into serious headwinds:
Congressman Jim McGovern took to the House floor yesterday and showed Democrats across the country how it is done. We just have to keep fighting:
I joined Rick Wilson, Joe Trippi and Stewart Stevens last night to talk about the importance of fighting the outrageous 4. It was a great conversation. Hope you can get to it in the coming days:
What Happened, What Comes Next - Yesterday I was going to present a new version of my With Dems presentation and decided instead to offer some thoughts about what happened in the 2024 election and where we go from here. I kicked it off with 25 minutes of remarks and then took questions for another 40 minutes. You can find a recording of our discussion, above. As I said in my remarks, my thoughts about 2024 are still far more a sketch than a photograph, and I’m still going slow, listening and learning from others.
Three articles I reference in my talk:
The New Republic, Biden Must Reinvent What A Presidential Campaign Is (youth vote, reform agenda, making public health a priority, need to build millions of info warriors)
In that spirit of listening and learning from others, be sure to check out our recent discussions here:
Anderson Clayton On Our Impressive Downballot Wins in North Carolina
On The Need For Pro-Democracy Media With Tara McGowan and Dan Pfeiffer (part of our Closing Strong series)
While I’m still working on my big, comprehensive take on the 2024 election, and today still have far more questions than answers, I continue to offer a written set of notes, updated daily:
First, the polls and my optimism. In every post and video over the past few months I repeated that it was a close, competitive election. I often said given how close everything was all polling could now tell us was that it was close. In the final days of the election Harris lead in the national polls, was closer to 270 in the battlegrounds and we outperformed 2020 in 5 of the 8 battleground states in the early vote - an encouraging sign. I believed that our financial advantage and superior field operation and the years of rejection of MAGA in previous elections would make it more likely that we would close strong and turn a close election into a win. I was not alone in believing Harris was more likely to win - the campaign told us so, as did most of the major forecasters, including Nate Silver and 538:
In turns out 2024 was in fact a close election. Trump will not reach 50% of the national vote and his final margin will be give or take 1.5 points. In the battlegrounds it will be 0.9 points in WI, 1.4 in MI, 1.9 in PA and 2.2 in GA. A shift of 1.9 points in MI, PA, WI - and Harris wins. 2024 was not a landslide, not a blowout. It was a close election, aided by illicit interventions by the Supreme Court and Judge Cannon which kept Trump’s trials for his disqualifying, serial betrayals of the country from coming before voters this year.
The Senate today is at 52-48 (PA is still counting) and Rs will have at most a 3 seat advantage in the House, making the chamber once again challenging to manage for a factious party. While Harris lost the 7 battleground states, we had important down ballot wins, including AZ, MI, NV, WI Senate and NC Governor. We had other important wins across the US, won the blue dot again in Nebraska and in the state where the Hopium community invested the most money, North Carolina, we won elections for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Supreme Court, NC-01 and broke the GOP’s state legislative supermajority.
Kamala Harris was given a very tough assignment. To come into and win the race starting three points down in late July was no easy thing. I think she then put in one of the greatest political performances we’ve seen in the modern era of American politics, taking the baton from President Biden, uniting the party around her, making a great VP pick, putting on the best and most inspiring Convention in my lifetime, crafting a powerful narrative and story for her campaign, kicking Trump’s blubbering ass in their only debate and then campaigning with a level of intensity and power we’ve seldom seen. There can be no question that she left it all out there on the playing field for us this year.
Despite all this, and despite him being a rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon there was a 5.8 point shift in the national popular vote towards Trump this cycle, and Trump is on track to be only the second Republican to win the national popular vote since 1988. Our underperformance with Hispanic voters and young people this year was a grave blow to the coalition that got us on average 51% of the vote over the past 4 Presidential election. It is an urgent priority to figure out what went wrong with these two groups, and to come with up with a party wide plan to regain lost ground. We also need a big discussion on why late deciders broke towards Trump, despite our closing ground and paid media advantage.
I also think we need a big conversation on why the threat of MAGA, which drove our elections in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 failed to do so in 2024 - particularly when it was a far more dangerous and extreme iteration of MAGA than any of its previous manifestations. Significant focus will need to be on why the Harris SuperPAC, Future Forward, armed with an unprecedented budget of more than $700m, was unable to make the historical ugliness of Trump and MAGA material enough to voters who had repeatedly rejected it in these previous elections. There was perhaps nothing more “baked into the cake” in 2024 than voters’ deep understanding something had gone wrong with the Republican Party in recent years.
If we had successfully disqualified Trump, as many campaigns have been able to do to their MAGA opponents with far less money and far less ugliness to work with, it is less likely late deciders would have broken to Trump and handed him the election. From the Exit Polls:
While there were bright spots for us in the 2024 election, particularly in the battleground states, this was a very bad election for our party, our freedoms, our democracy and our future and there is a lot of important work ahead of us.
What leaves me most optimistic about what comes next is the strength of our rising generation of political leaders and of our party itself. Through extraordinary efforts we forestalled a red wave in each of the last two elections, and should be proud of everything we did, together.
Here is where our 15 endorsed House candidates today:
Flips (4) - Whitesides (CA-27), Gillen NY-4, Riley NY-19, Bynum OR-5
Too Close To Call/Still Counting (3) - Gray CA-13, Tran CA-45, Bohannan IA-1
Losses (8) - Shah AZ-01, Engel AZ-06, Salas CA-22, Rollins CA-41, Vargas NE-02, Jones NY-17, Altman NJ-07, Stelson PA-10
While the House officially went to the Rs last Wednesday, I remain very proud of the good we’ve done, together, this cycle. We made deeply strategic investments and got important wins in a tough year in AZ, NC, NE, WI and critical House races across the country. Of the 6 House seats Dems flipped this cycle, our community aggressively backed 5 of them - George Whitesides CA-27, Tom Suozzi NY-3, Laura Gillen NY-4, Josh Riley NY-19 and Janelle Bynum OR-5.
There are still ballot curing opportunities for Gray and Tran with Grassroots Democrats HQ. Note that Tran is now ahead, and Gray is now down by less than 300 votes. We need to keep working it people!
Virtual Ballot Curing In California
CA-13 Adam Gray Ballot Curing Phone Bank
CA-45 Derek Tran Ballot Curing Phone Bank
CA-45 Derek Tran Recruitment Phone Bank
In-Person Ballot Curing In California
Post-Election Pods, Posts and Videos - I got together with Tara McGowan and David Rothkopf last Thursday for one of our Deep State Radio discussions about US politics. This is the first of what will be many discussions I will be participating in about what happened and where we go from here.
A few more things to chew if you haven’t gotten to them yet:
My big thank yous to members of the Hopium community who left it all out there on the playing field this cycle - post and video
I’ve offered a series of post-election posts on the need for us to get louder (here, here, and here), something we also discussed in my recent Closing Strong conversation with Dan Pfeiffer and Tara McGowan, and in my talk with Joe Trippi from Wednesday
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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