GDP Growth Comes in at 4.9%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopium Paid Subscriber Gathering Tonight at 7pm EST/Winning Virginia!

Friends, a few things today:

GDP Growth Comes in at 4.9% in the 3rd Quarter!!!!!- More remarkable economic news. Strength, dynamism, success of US economy remains perhaps the most important story in our politics today. You can do a deep dive on all the new data here.

Part of the driver of this big number was strong consumer spending, another sign that Americans are not down and distressed. This “everything is terrible” narrative about the economy is increasingly feeling to me a lot like the false red wave narrative in 2022. Not all the economic data is pointing in the same direction, and there is a great of data showing that people are content in their work and lives, spending money, aware that things are not as bad as many say. While this has been a challenging time, America is kicking ass and we should be loud and proud about it all peeps.

More of our work on the remarkable American economy and the even more remarkable American workers making it all possible:

• Voters Respond To Biden Accomplishments

• Wealth of Americans Jump/We Are Better Off

• With Democrats, Things Get Better

• Some Data on Worker Happiness, Life/Job Satisfaction

• A Smokin’ Jobs Report

• “It’s The American People Who Are The Heroes Of This Story”

• It’s Time For A Big Rethink on How We Poll and Talk About The Economy

Paid Hopium Gathering Tonight at 7pm EST - Look forward to seeing everyone tonight. So much to discuss! RSVP here. If you are not yet a paid subscriber here you can upgrade by clicking through the link below. A recording of the event will be available for paid subscribers for those who can’t make it live tonight.

A reminder that we have two event recordings available for you to watch at your convenience - With Democrats, Things Get Better, and my discussion with Tom Bonier about the success of the Democratic in elections since Dobbs.

Winning Virginia - While the early vote in Virginia is getting more Democratic every day, we are still not where we want to be and need to keep pushing. Hope will you donate to or volunteer for one of the six swing, too-close-to-call races we’ve gotten behind here, or keep working with whatever program you are working with already. We need to have a big weekend this weekend to have the election we all want to have in November. I will be canvassing on Saturday - weather is looking good! Thanks to all of you who have donated, volunteered - been so inspiring to see all the ways people are helping out in Virginia!

The New Speaker - We will have lots of time to discuss the extremist who just became the Speaker of the House, but this op-ed he wrote twenty years ago defending sodomy laws really caught my eye. Just read it.

And watch this video of Gaetz and Bannon from yesterday about MAGA Mike Johnson:

Unprecedented GOP Betrayal Continues - So in a time of dramatic and escalating tension around the world, the Republicans continue to:

• Block hundreds of Pentagon appointees, weakening our military

• Block over 60 State Department appointments. Those held up include 38 Ambassadorships and the Ambassadors to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon

• Block critical cybersecurity legislation, turn off a DHS program called Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), and are now working to terminate DHS programs to counter use of drones by terrorists here in the US and the office which works to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction against the American people

• Fight additional aid to Ukraine, once again appeasing and enabling Putin

• Excuse the Trump theft and wanton dissemination of America’s secrets, which is almost certainly the most significant national security breach in US history

• Elevate to the Speaker’s chair a man who was the one of the primary architects of the Republican Party’s effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and end American democracy.

We have a lot of work to do my friends, but very good news about the economy. Need to take the wins when they come, and this was a big one! - Simon