Phonebanking for VA📲. Lots of opportunities with VA Dems on Mobilize..
Share:⬇️
“During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson attacks Roe v. Wade, insisting that if only women were compelled to bring more "able-bodied workers" into the world, Republicans wouldn’t need to slash Social Security and Medicare.”
Don't ever stop thinking that because Bannon isn't in the news that he still isn't working in the dark shadows of our country to destroy our democracy. That's how traitors like him gain power. Stay vigilant.
Thank you for meeting with CA Indivisibles on Tuesday night, Simon. Your comments and enthusiasm for a positive outcome in 2024 were inspiring and uplifting, just when many of us needed a "boost". Love this update on the GDP and will be sharing on Spoutible and in Slack channels.
Please join us on Spoutible. I share your posts there and they are always received with interest and enthusiasm.
It took the U.S. a long time to be willing to call Trump the liar that he is. The Republican Party has surrendered to the pro-Putin authoritarian MAGA wing of the GOP, all of whom are now complicit in the subversion of democracy and are therefore traitors in my book. I believe it’s time to call them that.
Yet Biden's approval is down 11% among Democrats and down w/ independents. Please wake up to the fact that Biden's Israel response is a huge crisis for Dems, affecting the whole party. The last time I saw the youth-lefty-activist contingent this upset was after Roe v. Wade, but that was directed at the GOP. I won't keep bugging you about this, I'm just hearing a lot of happy talk and takes from Dem strategists I usually agree with that are so mind-bogglingly off. This is bad. I live in VA and am concerned this is where this political earthquake will show up first. Not trying to scare or demoralize folks, please keep working, just needing Dem leaders to wake up here.
that data is from a single poll, and not replicated in other polls this week. If you are going to make this case please come back with polls specific to Israel Gaza, as there is of course broad support for both Israel and what the President is doing right now. We cannot allow what may be the activity of a small number of college age activists bully us into believing this is a much bigger issue.
Finally, I am not going to take kindly to defenses of what is happening on college campuses right now against American Jewish kids. It is among the most vile and dangerous expressions of antisemitism in American history. You can be against the President's policies and what Israel is doing without being against American Jews. I have repeatedly public criticized the Netanyahu government, and even held a talk with a prominent Israeli journalist earlier this year talking about the domestic mobilization against the Netanyahu government. To be clear - Hamas has called for the elimination of all Jews, including me and my family. They killed 30 Americans. They hold 10 hostage today. Their assault on every day Israelis - not soldiers - was barbaric, with few analogs in recent history. There is no justification for what they've done. None. I look forward to having this debate in the coming months, and it is a debate we need to have. But on this site, where we operate with data and are very careful and precise, people need to be very careful on this issue. I do not believe what we are witnessing is a break with younger people; I think we are seeing resistance to what the President is doing with an incredibly narrow set of younger Americans who are loud and vocal, and whose opposition has been heavily amplified in a deeply degraded information space right now. The idea that the typical young American would be care more about Gaza than the economy, health care, gun safety, climate change, abortion, loss of democracy is ludicrous.
But as I keep saying we are in the early days here, and need lots more light and a lot less heat to get through this, together.
Simon, to your point is a video of Iranian born, ‘I am a Voter’ cofounder on MSNBC, just dismayed about these few far left misguided protests. She makes great points about the lack of facts and understanding that Hamas Is a terrorist group, committing terror against Jews AND the Palestine people.
I appreciate you engaging with this and appreciate your work. I won't bother you with it again. What I'm seeing among part of the Dem coalition here in VA is just very concerning to me and not at all matching what I'm hearing from a lot of strategists right now, but if you don't see anything significant in the data, you know better than me! You are right that it is important to stay together and resist reactivity in difficult times. You are better at it than most which is why it's important that this community exists.
We are living through very challenging times, and none of what President Biden has to do is simple or easy. There is no easy path here. But the path he has chosen on Ukraine and Israel-Gaza to me is the right one, and we are going to have to sell it to folks who have doubts. That's what politics is all about - doing the right thing first, and then working to bring people along. Yes, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but Biden has been a good President and I look forward to continuing to make the case for him over the next 12 months. No need to disengage but here, at Hopium, folks should not throw their anxieties out there without data and back up. We are all anxious, worried. Here we work to deepen our collective understanding and then take action to make things better.
For what it's worth, as someone whose whole social world is seemingly composed of progressives under the age of 45, there is a camp of people who use the kind of rhetoric you are referring to as far as some of the protests. These are your "antifa" type folks who don't vote for philosophical reasons or because to them dems are barely better than republicans. They aren't really in the dem coalition to begin with. Then there is a more general left of center group who are politically engaged, are petrified of fascism, and especially since Dobbs have been reliable voters for Dems. These folks probably have moderate views on Israel but are seeing the carnage & destruction in Gaza, want the bombing to stop, and are very upset that hardly any of their dem leaders are making that happen or even speaking to that. So they are starting to seek out voices that are speaking to that frustration, most of whom are in the former group. It's the latter group that I feel like leaders/strategists are not picking up on, and it's setting off alarm bells. Thank you for your grace.
Yes, we have work to do to bring people along, but we are also in the very early days of what could be a long and difficult conflict so there will be time. Like everything we do here we need to be offense, be informed, make our case and not less BS and the crazy noise in our system right now blow us around.
This is some Hopium everyone! Read the newspaper link. Incumbent is older trusted and wise man against lying maga loud mouth younger female who is affiliated with white supremacists.
Town turned out like 4x more over 2019 and incumbent won by 80%!
Maga cand still has not conceded. Local news did an expose on her white supremacist ties earlier in campaign. Vids are out there.
Simon this has got to be a repudiation in your book???
Geez, I needed this great news after M. Johnson mess.
I was so happy this happened especially in Franklin, TN. It was great Phil Williams with News 5 investigated Gabrielle Hanson. Whew. She was involved in a prostitution/ sex trafficking ring and has a record to prove it. her body guards were Proud Boy types. I am so glad they rejected her.
Thanks Sandy for your reply. It is an example of how things should work..... terrible candidate exposed by local news, shared factual info amongst concerned voters, voter intensity due to awful Covenant shooting (and her comments were terrible too), Incumbent running a clean, fair and above board campaign on his record, and so many early voters came out giving all the pro-normal candidates a boost.
And the big victory/ turn out #’s are so heart warming considering that Franklin voters said NO, to hate & lies with those disgusting themes being too prevalent. That is why if I find anything ‘Hopium-ish’, I post it. Simon says that even a small# of voters, 13,000 in Franklin, like us Information Warriors 33,000 can make a difference.... in their community for the better.
NC Hopium after our new gerrymandering map has turned his district red and crippled his re-elect, Dem Rep Jeff Jackson plans to run for NC AG in 2024!!! And fight political corruption!
I just read this post over at the Bulwark. It was posted by GRL and I think it does a great job of further making Simon’s point that with Democrats, things are better.
From GRL:
A friend sent this to me last evening...so thought I would share...chew on it.
Why Do Democrats Get Offended When Told Basic Facts?
So asks William Weir, who describes himself as “a life-long southerner, devout Christian, and a true conservative.”
His answer, posted August 5, may surprise you:
________________________________________
No. You’re thinking of Republicans. But let’s test. I’m going to throw out some basic facts, and we’ll see who gets offended. Let’s begin.
• Over the last fifty years, every Republican President has seen a recession, while we have had only one recession begin under a Democrat, a short six month recession under Carter.
• Over the last forty years every Republican President has created a deficit at least double the previous record. Over that same time, every Democratic President (including already Biden) has cut the deficit by half or more.
• The last three Democratic Presidents (including Biden) have all seen unemployment effectively cut in half. The last two Republicans both saw it effectively double.
• Over the last fifty years, despite holding the Presidency for only 22 years compared to Republicans holding it 28, stock market return has been just over 100% under Republicans and just shy of 1,000% under Democrats. Over 42 million jobs have been created under Democrats compared to only 24 million under Republicans. Income growth averaged 2.2% under Democrats compared to 0.6% under Republicans. GDP growth averaged 4.1% under Democrats compared to 2.7% under Republicans.
• Going back to Truman, four of the five Presidents who have seen the largest increase in domestic oil production were Democrats (with Trump scoring the number five spot and Obama placing first). Only six Presidents over that time have seen domestic oil production fall, and five of them were Republicans.
• Since 1980, The abortion rate held steady under Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. It fell under both Clinton and Obama, and under Trump rose for the first time since the 1970’s.
• Since the Nixon Administration, 338 members of Presidential administrations have been indicted on criminal charges. Three of these were in Democratic administrations, 335 were in Republican administrations.
• In the last century, only two Presidents have lost jobs during their administrations, both Republicans (Hoover and Trump)
• Over the last 80 years, five of the six Presidents with the highest job creation were Democrats, with only Reagan making the list. (Current rankings are Clinton, Reagan, Biden, Obama, Johnson, and Carter, with Biden likely to move into second place before the end of his first term.)
• Ten of the eleven safest states in the Union are blue or lean blue with Utah the only red state. Fifteen of the sixteen least safe states are red, with Georgia being the only non-red state in that mix (and until recently we would have considered Georgia a red state). (Scores based on a combination of personal safety, road safety, financial safety, and emergency preparedness.)
• Four of the five states with the highest poverty rate are deep red (New Mexico being the only blue state). Four of the five states with the lowest poverty rates are blue or lean blue, with Utah the only red state.
• The five states with the best education are all blue. Four of the five states with the worst education are deep red, with New Mexico the only blue state.
• Four of the five states with the highest incarceration rates are deep red, with Delaware the only blue state. Four of the five with the lowest incarceration rates are blue or lean blue with North Dakota the only red state.
• The ten states with a the best healthcare are all blue. The five states with the worst healthcare are all red. In fact ten of the bottom eleven are all red with Georgia being the only exception.
• Eight of the ten states that pay the highest Federal income tax per capita are blue. (That’s per capita, so population isn’t a factor.) Eight of the ten states who rely most on Federal funding are red.
• The five states with the highest covid death rates were all red. Three of the five with the lowest death rates are blue with Alaska and Utah the only exceptions.
Okay. Those are just unbiased, easily verifiable facts. Now let’s see who gets their feelings hurt!
________________________________________
Clearly, we need more conservatives like pastor Weir.
Regrettably, the news about the American economy is not felt by the 60% living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, wherein family income often only is sustained by more people working longer hours and still weighted down by mortgage debt, credit card debt, and the like. In my view, a failure to keep the plight of the working class at the center of our politics could have irreversible consequences in 24.
Just saw that Steve Schmidt is behind the push for Dean Phillips to challenge President Biden. Seems like Steve is believing current polls that show Trump ahead.
This looks as dangerous as the No Labels group.
Can you comment, Simon? And can anyone get Steve and Dean to stop and put their efforts behind President Biden?
Judith, For what it’s worth, Schmidt, while aware of polls, for some time, despite repeated rebuttals from his readers, has expressed his deep conviction that Biden, though a solid transitional leader, needed to groom the next generation to step up. As for the comparison with No Labels, I don’t imagine Schmidt would get behind a candidate who would compete with Biden in the General.
The Atlanta Fed was right again. Nailed it over a month ago.
Great news on GDP !!
Phonebanking for VA📲. Lots of opportunities with VA Dems on Mobilize..
Share:⬇️
“During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson attacks Roe v. Wade, insisting that if only women were compelled to bring more "able-bodied workers" into the world, Republicans wouldn’t need to slash Social Security and Medicare.”
https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1717183190463336780
Don't ever stop thinking that because Bannon isn't in the news that he still isn't working in the dark shadows of our country to destroy our democracy. That's how traitors like him gain power. Stay vigilant.
Thank you for meeting with CA Indivisibles on Tuesday night, Simon. Your comments and enthusiasm for a positive outcome in 2024 were inspiring and uplifting, just when many of us needed a "boost". Love this update on the GDP and will be sharing on Spoutible and in Slack channels.
Please join us on Spoutible. I share your posts there and they are always received with interest and enthusiasm.
It took the U.S. a long time to be willing to call Trump the liar that he is. The Republican Party has surrendered to the pro-Putin authoritarian MAGA wing of the GOP, all of whom are now complicit in the subversion of democracy and are therefore traitors in my book. I believe it’s time to call them that.
Yet Biden's approval is down 11% among Democrats and down w/ independents. Please wake up to the fact that Biden's Israel response is a huge crisis for Dems, affecting the whole party. The last time I saw the youth-lefty-activist contingent this upset was after Roe v. Wade, but that was directed at the GOP. I won't keep bugging you about this, I'm just hearing a lot of happy talk and takes from Dem strategists I usually agree with that are so mind-bogglingly off. This is bad. I live in VA and am concerned this is where this political earthquake will show up first. Not trying to scare or demoralize folks, please keep working, just needing Dem leaders to wake up here.
that data is from a single poll, and not replicated in other polls this week. If you are going to make this case please come back with polls specific to Israel Gaza, as there is of course broad support for both Israel and what the President is doing right now. We cannot allow what may be the activity of a small number of college age activists bully us into believing this is a much bigger issue.
Finally, I am not going to take kindly to defenses of what is happening on college campuses right now against American Jewish kids. It is among the most vile and dangerous expressions of antisemitism in American history. You can be against the President's policies and what Israel is doing without being against American Jews. I have repeatedly public criticized the Netanyahu government, and even held a talk with a prominent Israeli journalist earlier this year talking about the domestic mobilization against the Netanyahu government. To be clear - Hamas has called for the elimination of all Jews, including me and my family. They killed 30 Americans. They hold 10 hostage today. Their assault on every day Israelis - not soldiers - was barbaric, with few analogs in recent history. There is no justification for what they've done. None. I look forward to having this debate in the coming months, and it is a debate we need to have. But on this site, where we operate with data and are very careful and precise, people need to be very careful on this issue. I do not believe what we are witnessing is a break with younger people; I think we are seeing resistance to what the President is doing with an incredibly narrow set of younger Americans who are loud and vocal, and whose opposition has been heavily amplified in a deeply degraded information space right now. The idea that the typical young American would be care more about Gaza than the economy, health care, gun safety, climate change, abortion, loss of democracy is ludicrous.
But as I keep saying we are in the early days here, and need lots more light and a lot less heat to get through this, together.
Simon, to your point is a video of Iranian born, ‘I am a Voter’ cofounder on MSNBC, just dismayed about these few far left misguided protests. She makes great points about the lack of facts and understanding that Hamas Is a terrorist group, committing terror against Jews AND the Palestine people.
https://youtu.be/XR-p_3ZGPGE?si=_FXTyFsG8gkfIrJM
I appreciate you engaging with this and appreciate your work. I won't bother you with it again. What I'm seeing among part of the Dem coalition here in VA is just very concerning to me and not at all matching what I'm hearing from a lot of strategists right now, but if you don't see anything significant in the data, you know better than me! You are right that it is important to stay together and resist reactivity in difficult times. You are better at it than most which is why it's important that this community exists.
We are living through very challenging times, and none of what President Biden has to do is simple or easy. There is no easy path here. But the path he has chosen on Ukraine and Israel-Gaza to me is the right one, and we are going to have to sell it to folks who have doubts. That's what politics is all about - doing the right thing first, and then working to bring people along. Yes, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but Biden has been a good President and I look forward to continuing to make the case for him over the next 12 months. No need to disengage but here, at Hopium, folks should not throw their anxieties out there without data and back up. We are all anxious, worried. Here we work to deepen our collective understanding and then take action to make things better.
For what it's worth, as someone whose whole social world is seemingly composed of progressives under the age of 45, there is a camp of people who use the kind of rhetoric you are referring to as far as some of the protests. These are your "antifa" type folks who don't vote for philosophical reasons or because to them dems are barely better than republicans. They aren't really in the dem coalition to begin with. Then there is a more general left of center group who are politically engaged, are petrified of fascism, and especially since Dobbs have been reliable voters for Dems. These folks probably have moderate views on Israel but are seeing the carnage & destruction in Gaza, want the bombing to stop, and are very upset that hardly any of their dem leaders are making that happen or even speaking to that. So they are starting to seek out voices that are speaking to that frustration, most of whom are in the former group. It's the latter group that I feel like leaders/strategists are not picking up on, and it's setting off alarm bells. Thank you for your grace.
Yes, we have work to do to bring people along, but we are also in the very early days of what could be a long and difficult conflict so there will be time. Like everything we do here we need to be offense, be informed, make our case and not less BS and the crazy noise in our system right now blow us around.
Simon, I bet you saw this but Franklin TN denounced MAGA in their mayor and aldermen election! Yay!!!!
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/local-maga-candidates-lose-big-in-deep-red-tennessee-county
https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/oct/25/franklin-incumbent-mayor-ken-moore-wins-in/
This is some Hopium everyone! Read the newspaper link. Incumbent is older trusted and wise man against lying maga loud mouth younger female who is affiliated with white supremacists.
Town turned out like 4x more over 2019 and incumbent won by 80%!
Maga cand still has not conceded. Local news did an expose on her white supremacist ties earlier in campaign. Vids are out there.
Simon this has got to be a repudiation in your book???
Geez, I needed this great news after M. Johnson mess.
Enjoy this win! Go VA!
I was so happy this happened especially in Franklin, TN. It was great Phil Williams with News 5 investigated Gabrielle Hanson. Whew. She was involved in a prostitution/ sex trafficking ring and has a record to prove it. her body guards were Proud Boy types. I am so glad they rejected her.
Thanks Sandy for your reply. It is an example of how things should work..... terrible candidate exposed by local news, shared factual info amongst concerned voters, voter intensity due to awful Covenant shooting (and her comments were terrible too), Incumbent running a clean, fair and above board campaign on his record, and so many early voters came out giving all the pro-normal candidates a boost.
And the big victory/ turn out #’s are so heart warming considering that Franklin voters said NO, to hate & lies with those disgusting themes being too prevalent. That is why if I find anything ‘Hopium-ish’, I post it. Simon says that even a small# of voters, 13,000 in Franklin, like us Information Warriors 33,000 can make a difference.... in their community for the better.
Take care Sandy!
NC Hopium after our new gerrymandering map has turned his district red and crippled his re-elect, Dem Rep Jeff Jackson plans to run for NC AG in 2024!!! And fight political corruption!
https://www.wral.com/story/jeff-jackson-nc-congressman-drawn-out-of-his-seat-will-run-for-nc-attorney-general-to-fight-political-corruption/21115982/
Hello Hopium Community,
I just read this post over at the Bulwark. It was posted by GRL and I think it does a great job of further making Simon’s point that with Democrats, things are better.
From GRL:
A friend sent this to me last evening...so thought I would share...chew on it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Do Democrats Get Offended When Told Basic Facts?
So asks William Weir, who describes himself as “a life-long southerner, devout Christian, and a true conservative.”
His answer, posted August 5, may surprise you:
________________________________________
No. You’re thinking of Republicans. But let’s test. I’m going to throw out some basic facts, and we’ll see who gets offended. Let’s begin.
• Over the last fifty years, every Republican President has seen a recession, while we have had only one recession begin under a Democrat, a short six month recession under Carter.
• Over the last forty years every Republican President has created a deficit at least double the previous record. Over that same time, every Democratic President (including already Biden) has cut the deficit by half or more.
• The last three Democratic Presidents (including Biden) have all seen unemployment effectively cut in half. The last two Republicans both saw it effectively double.
• Over the last fifty years, despite holding the Presidency for only 22 years compared to Republicans holding it 28, stock market return has been just over 100% under Republicans and just shy of 1,000% under Democrats. Over 42 million jobs have been created under Democrats compared to only 24 million under Republicans. Income growth averaged 2.2% under Democrats compared to 0.6% under Republicans. GDP growth averaged 4.1% under Democrats compared to 2.7% under Republicans.
• Going back to Truman, four of the five Presidents who have seen the largest increase in domestic oil production were Democrats (with Trump scoring the number five spot and Obama placing first). Only six Presidents over that time have seen domestic oil production fall, and five of them were Republicans.
• Since 1980, The abortion rate held steady under Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. It fell under both Clinton and Obama, and under Trump rose for the first time since the 1970’s.
• Since the Nixon Administration, 338 members of Presidential administrations have been indicted on criminal charges. Three of these were in Democratic administrations, 335 were in Republican administrations.
• In the last century, only two Presidents have lost jobs during their administrations, both Republicans (Hoover and Trump)
• Over the last 80 years, five of the six Presidents with the highest job creation were Democrats, with only Reagan making the list. (Current rankings are Clinton, Reagan, Biden, Obama, Johnson, and Carter, with Biden likely to move into second place before the end of his first term.)
• Ten of the eleven safest states in the Union are blue or lean blue with Utah the only red state. Fifteen of the sixteen least safe states are red, with Georgia being the only non-red state in that mix (and until recently we would have considered Georgia a red state). (Scores based on a combination of personal safety, road safety, financial safety, and emergency preparedness.)
• Four of the five states with the highest poverty rate are deep red (New Mexico being the only blue state). Four of the five states with the lowest poverty rates are blue or lean blue, with Utah the only red state.
• The five states with the best education are all blue. Four of the five states with the worst education are deep red, with New Mexico the only blue state.
• Four of the five states with the highest incarceration rates are deep red, with Delaware the only blue state. Four of the five with the lowest incarceration rates are blue or lean blue with North Dakota the only red state.
• The ten states with a the best healthcare are all blue. The five states with the worst healthcare are all red. In fact ten of the bottom eleven are all red with Georgia being the only exception.
• Eight of the ten states that pay the highest Federal income tax per capita are blue. (That’s per capita, so population isn’t a factor.) Eight of the ten states who rely most on Federal funding are red.
• The five states with the highest covid death rates were all red. Three of the five with the lowest death rates are blue with Alaska and Utah the only exceptions.
Okay. Those are just unbiased, easily verifiable facts. Now let’s see who gets their feelings hurt!
________________________________________
Clearly, we need more conservatives like pastor Weir.
Regrettably, the news about the American economy is not felt by the 60% living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, wherein family income often only is sustained by more people working longer hours and still weighted down by mortgage debt, credit card debt, and the like. In my view, a failure to keep the plight of the working class at the center of our politics could have irreversible consequences in 24.
Just saw that Steve Schmidt is behind the push for Dean Phillips to challenge President Biden. Seems like Steve is believing current polls that show Trump ahead.
This looks as dangerous as the No Labels group.
Can you comment, Simon? And can anyone get Steve and Dean to stop and put their efforts behind President Biden?
Judith, For what it’s worth, Schmidt, while aware of polls, for some time, despite repeated rebuttals from his readers, has expressed his deep conviction that Biden, though a solid transitional leader, needed to groom the next generation to step up. As for the comparison with No Labels, I don’t imagine Schmidt would get behind a candidate who would compete with Biden in the General.