Get to 55, Another Strong Jobs Report, DeSantis?, Biden Takes Decisive Action on SVB

The Monday Newsletter/Tue Event w/Bill Kristol, Robert Hubbell

Things I’m working on, thinking about this Monday morning:

Get to 55, Expanding Our Coalition, The Youth Opportunity – Dropped our first big Hopium Chronicles analysis on Thursday.  This one discusses the idea of Democrats going for it this cycle, and exploring ways to expand our national vote from 51% to 55%.  This conversation is going to be central to our work this year.  Take a look and offer feedback in the comments section. Really excited about this project.

Tuesday Pro-Democracy Event with Bill Kristol and Robert Hubbell – Our friends Markers for Democracy has organized a few other allied groups to host a great conversation with three of us on Tuesday night at 730pm ET.  This event is open to all and you can learn more, RSVP here. 

Biden’s Statement This Morning on The Banks, SVB -

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

Biden: "Thanks to the quick action of my administration over the past few days, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe... no losses will be borne by taxpayers... the management of these banks will be fired... investors in the banks will not be protected"

Another Really Strong Jobs Report – 311,000 new jobs added in February, another remarkable jobs report.  In my monthly look at the jobs report we review data showing how strong the economic recovery has been under Biden and remind that the last three Republican Presidents brought recessions, higher deficits and American decline, the last three Democratic Presidents have brought growth, lower deficits, progress. 

Along with launching a national youth voter registration campaign, we think the other big job for Democrats this year is do everything we can to win the big economic argument with MAGA.  Learn more about our thinking about that here.

DeSantis’s Bumbling Start – In a series of threads on Twitter which have received millions of views I discuss how the new MAGA golden boy has gotten off to a rough start.  New polling shows how out of the mainstream his views are, even for voters in Florida; and he has already encountering performance issues on the trail which should be worrying Republicans.  Catch me and Reed Galen talking about what a weak candidate we think DeSantis is (and much more!) on this new Lincoln Project Podcast.

The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln

The @GOP wants @RonDeSantisFL to be a country club Republican…the problem is that he’s an authoritarian wannabe steeped in MAGA. @NDN_NPI’s @SimonWDC says more about it with @reedgalen in the latest pod: apple.co/3FafDz9

With Democrats Things Get Better – Next Tuesday, March 21^st at 1pm I will be hosting the next monthly showing of my most important presentation, With Democrats Things Get Better.  You can learn more about the presentation and RSVP here.  If you haven’t seen it hope you will check it out either live or when the recording is posted here on Hopium Chronicles. 

On Fox and Loudness – Been very active in this space in the last few weeks.  See me quoted in these articles in the Washington Post, Politico and Steve Benen’s MaddowBlog. Best summary of my thinking on this seminal moment in American politics when the curtain has been pulled back from the Wizard, with links and additional resources, can be found here.

Does America Need More Workers? In a new post I talk about the need for America to find more workers, and explore options for where they might come from. 

“Two Elections” in Politico - In a new interview in Politico, I talk about my “two elections” take on 2022, and why I would rather be us than them heading into 2024:

THREE QUESTIONS WITH… Nightly spoke with Simon Rosenberg, a veteran of two Democratic presidential campaigns and a political strategist with NDN, also known as New Democrat Network, a soon-to-shut-down liberal advocacy and research group that he has led since the 1990s.

You were among the few political strategists who continuously expressed skepticism about the idea of a “red wave” in 2022. Are there any similar forces that you see shaping the 2024 election cycle that will affect Biden’s reelection campaign?

Part of the reason that so many people got the election wrong in 2022, is that they overly discounted the ugliness of MAGA. In the 2018 and 2020 elections, there was an overwhelming vote against MAGA in those two elections, and the Republicans ran towards those politics in 2021, which I felt was a huge error. Usually when a party fails politically they run towards a new politics and not a politics that didn’t work.

Where Republicans have to be worried in 2024 is that the presidential battleground has now voted against MAGA in three consecutive elections. There’s muscle memory in now understanding the dangers of MAGA and the two leading Republican candidates right now, look and feel very MAGA.

For DeSantis and Trump, whoever of the two win the nomination, are going to be entering far more hostile terrain than DeSantis has faced in Florida for example, or Trump did in 2016, because there’s now been three elections in the battleground where Democrats have done well and Republicans haven’t.

Which Republican candidate would be easiest — and most difficult — for Biden to run against in the 2024 race?

I don’t think we have any way of knowing that right now. I think it depends on how the candidates in the Republican primary perform. Certainly, I think there’s still a lot of big questions about DeSantis and his ability at the national level. I think he’s run too far right in a way that it would be difficult to present himself as anything other than a MAGA candidate, which won’t be helpful in the battleground.

We’re favored to win the presidential race in 2024, because the basic dynamic in 2022, which is that basically, we’ve done a good enough job and they’re still a little but too crazy — could still be the basic dynamic in 2024. There will be a sense that, ‘hey, the Democrats, Joe Biden, did a good job. You know, why get rid of them?’ And then you look at the Republicans and they still feel a little bit too crazy. That’s the likely scenario today, but of course, that could change.

If Biden doesn’t run for a second term, will the party immediately coalesce around Vice President Kamala Harris or will there be a contested nomination?

If Joe Biden doesn’t run, Vice President Harris will be the front runner for the Democratic nomination, but there will be a contested and vigorous primary.