It's Vice President Kamala Harris Now, And We Have An Election To Go Win!
Joe Biden is a proud patriot, a warrior for all of us and a great American President
Happy Monday all, and what a Monday it is. We have a new Presidential candidate, a new ticket soon, an historic, profoundly successful President to honor and be grateful for and an election to go win.
To talk about our new moment I’ve scheduled two calls this week - tonight at 7pm for paid subscribers, tomorrow night at 7pm for the broader Hopium community. The Tuesday night call will be recorded and shared here on Wednesday. You can RSVP to either by following the links above and if you want to become a paid subscriber to join the call tonight you can do so here.
Since President Biden announced he was leaving the race the new Harris campaign has raised over $50m online, and we’ve contributed more than $55,000 so far here at Hopium. I hope all of you will take an action on her behalf today, this week - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. Let’s help the campaign get to $100m raised and overwhelm their volunteer shifts!
We are all going to learn a lot about the Vice President in the coming days - her story, her vision, her agenda. Let’s start with this ad from her 2020 primary campaign. It’s a good indication of what we can expect from her:
A few things about the 2024 election remain true today:
In the last few months we’ve gotten repeated and powerful confirmations of the success of the Biden-Harris Presidency - inflation *fell* last month and is running at the Fed’s target rate over the past six months, crime and murder rates are way down, gas prices are down, the flow to the border is down. We’ve had the strongest economic recovery of any advanced economy in the world, the best job market since the 1960s, the lowest uninsured rate in American history, the deficit is trillions less, the Dow has broken 40,000 and all three indices continue to hover in record territory. Domestic oil, gas and renewable production continue to be at all time highs leaving America more energy independent than it has been in decades. The Wall Street Journal has called the American economy the “envy of the world,” and the Economist recently wrote about the unprecedented start up boom America is experiencing right now. The three big Biden-Harris investment bills have dramatically accelerated the energy transition necessary to combat climate change and will be creating opportunities and jobs for our workers for decades to come. Together, the President and Vice President have reinvigorated the Western alliance, been an historic champion of democracy and freedom, and President Biden helped successfully defeat the fascists in recent European and French elections.
What is also true today is the election remains close and competitive. The Vice President has led Trump in several recent polls. Our Senate polling has held, and remains encouraging. We have one of our largest leads in the Congressional Generic this year, and the largest since Mid-May. We’ve been winning elections of all kinds all across the country these last few years and the far-right was just denied power in Europe, the UK and France - folks just keep voting against the fascists. We have no idea where polling on the race will be for some time, but right now the race is close, and winning the Presidential, keeping the Senate and flipping the House remains something we can do. Expect lots of games from right wing pollsters in the coming days - prepare to block out the noise - as we just won’t really know where the race is for weeks, perhaps until after the Vice President chooses her running mate and we have our Convention in August.
What is also still true today is that Trump remains a rapist, a fraudster, a traitor and a felon. He is old, unfit and unwell; a dangerous extremist; and here’s what he and his Project 2025 and Russia loving VP want to do if in the White House:
They want Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. Americans to lose even more rights and freedoms. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist's baby to term, and for more women to die on operating room tables. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. Verified rapists in positions of authority. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Huge new tariffs which will raise prices on everything and wreck the global economy which has made us prosperous. Big new tax cuts for their wealthiest donors and tax increases for every day people. Books banned across the US. Seniors to pay more for insulin and prescription drugs. Foreign governments free to pollute our daily discourse and harass our citizens. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to be pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.
What also remains true today is that in addition to rallying behind the new Harris campaign, we have other critical candidate and state parties who need your help today, for here at Hopium we do more and worry less:
Biden-Harris - $658,000 today, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Winning The House - $543,000 today, $600,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. We’ve also raised more then $46,000 into the individual House campaigns (you can either give to all 12 or each one individually)
North Carolina - $331,000 today, $400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton
Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $295,000 today, $350,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with Ruben Gallego
Nebraska/Blue Dot - $122,000 today, $150,000 goal- Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb
Here’s how you can do even more:
Volunteer for the Harris campaign - never been more important to volunteer!
Watch our interviews with Janelle Bynum (OR-5), George Whitesides (CA-27), Kirsten Engel (AZ-06) and Andrei Cherny (AZ-01)
Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you. Early voting begins in a few states on September 20th, less than 2 months away!
Finally, I want to thank all of the members of the Hopium community for raising your game these last few weeks as we debated the best way to beat Donald Trump. I asked folks to be guided by respect - respect for our President, respect for our Party leaders, respect for each other. I asked you to not be a bystander but a leader, and to work to keep us together during a tough period, and bring us back together when the path became clear. I know there are many in this community, many many of you, who love and admire President Biden and wanted him to remain our candidate. I am sure yesterday came as a shock and that many of you will need some time to process what happened, to take some time off and focus on other things. That’s fine. Yesterday was a shock. After returning from Raleigh yesterday and a great trip to North Carolina, I was at a Nats baseball game when the news broke. I thought I was going to have a day off. The weather was beautiful in DC yesterday and the Nats are playing good baseball right now. And then my phone started going crazy and we all got the news.
What Joe Biden did yesterday was hard, hard beyond understanding. But it cements his legacy as one of America’s greatest Presidents. He came out of retirement to lead the fight against the escalating extremism of MAGA. He beat Trump, flipped the Senate and lead us through important election victories across the country these last two years. He inherited one of the worst first days of any American President in all of our history - COVID, insurrection, lack of a peaceful transfer of power, an economy in terrible shape - and look we are now - the American economy is booming, the stock market is setting records, inflation is falling, we are more energy independent than any time in decades, crime is down, the flow to the border is down, the West is revitalized, the energy transition dramatically accelerated - the list goes on and on. Joe Biden has been the leader and President America needed at this critical time in our history. A good man, a family man, a man of unimaginable resilience and grit. A warrior for all of us. An American Cincinnatus.
And now he has one more battle to fight, and yesterday he choose to fight it as President and not a candidate. It was an act of historic courage, patriotism and humility. An act of a great American President.
So I wake this morning proud of my courageous President, proud of my strong and powerful party, proud to be in community with all of you, and fired up and ready to go elect Kamala Harris the next President of the United States. Let’s put our heads down in the coming days my friends, get to work, and let’s go win this thing, together, for our democracy, for our freedoms and our future - Simon
A few additional notes based on the comments today:
We are not going to know where the race is polling wise until after the VP picks her running mate and maybe until after our Convention. So folks need to be patient and realize there will be right wing pollsters out with data showing Trump crushing the VP. We just have to go slow, take it easy and ignore the noise. The underlying structure of the race - Congressional Generic, Senate polling - remains encouraging for us. Voters have had some big shocks and lots of new info in these past few weeks so it may take a while for everyone to process it all and come to new understandings. The VP's polling these last few weeks have been encouraging but the Harris Trump match up was hypothetical and did not include everything that has happened in recent days. So I think the data we've had while instructive could not really capture the current moment. So we will learn more in the weeks ahead.
Next, we need to full of Hopium in the days ahead meaning that we approach the world with optimism and confidence and not let fear, uncertainty and doubt drive our understandings. We also should start visualizing success around our new candidate, not just visualizing failure or struggle.
I will have more to say about all this tonight and in the days ahead. There is a lot of reporting that the Rs would have much rather run against Biden, and the best evidence of that within a few hours of the announcement yesterday Trump already began backing out of the September 10th debate.
Keep working it everyone - S
In this video, eminent historian Heather Cox Richardson analyzes yesterday’s dramatic developments. I encourage everyone to watch it. This is uplifting – pure Hopium!
https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/507646105045285
Heather makes the point that President Biden’s timing is pure genius! It leaves the Republican Party and their ticket stranded high and dry. All their attack points are suddenly irrelevant. In fact, their claims that Joe is "old, weak and unfit" have now boomeranged against Donald Trump – the oldest American presidential candidate ever!