Let's Make This A Big Weekend, People!

More Evidence GOP Brand Has Taken A Big Hit, Our Ridiculous Speaker, Ongoing GOP Betrayal

Friends,

This is it - the final weekend of the 2023 elections! We’ve had a very good year elections across the US this year and need to end strong on Tuesday. Wherever you are working and donating right now please make sure you get in one more shift of canvassing, phone banking, texting and make any last minute contributions today. Things are close everywhere, and your support can make the difference in races which may end up being decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes. Thank you everyone for all the hard work these last few months!

As folks here know I am putting in a special pitch for Virginia. We see a meaningful improvement in the early vote yesterday, so all our work has begun to pay off and change the race. You can donate and volunteer for the top state senate and house candidates here. The DNC has a special phone bank tonight with VP Harris and Rep, Maxwell Frost - sign up here. I joined the good folks at Meidas Touch yesterday to talk Virginia, Ohio and the other elections - watch below. Finally, our friend Ben Wikler, the WI Dem Party Chair, is hosting a big weekend of action for anyone who wants to help out in that critical battleground.

Also of note - while some have claimed there’s has been a backlash against President Biden over Israel-Gaza, at this point there’s no clear evidence this has happened. He’s up in some polls this week, down in others, all within margin of error. So stay positive, chins up, don’t give into the bullshit and keep fighting all. We can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More Encouraging Congressional Polling - Yesterday I shared new Economist/YouGov data showing Congressional Republicans far more unpopular than Congressional Dems, dangerously so. Today our friends at Navigator released their quarterly in-depth look at battleground House districts, and it too finds truly terrible numbers for Congressional Republicans right now:

This data is significant for two reasons: 1) If it holds we are very likely to win the House next year. 2) It is contributing to the understanding of what the Republican Party is in critical parts of the country, which can end up dragging down their ticket in 2024. It’s unbelievably bad news for the Republican Party.

Just another reason why I would much rather be us than them as we head in 2024.

A Powerful Message About Our Current Moment From The Government of Germany - The video below was posted on Twitter by the government of Germany, and includes the following passage. I hope you will watch.

It's almost four weeks since the horrific terrorist attack on #Israel. A lot has happened, the public debate has become heated and confused. Find thoughts from Vice-Chancellor Robert #Habeck in the video, putting the events in context. With English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles.

Our New, Ridiculous Speaker - Been quite a first week for our new Speaker. Worrisome story about his taking in a 14 year old boy without formally adopting him. Bizarre story of his reporting no assets or banks accounts on his annual financial disclosure form. He deleted 69 episodes of his podcast from the Internet, and his wife deleted her company’s website (WTF on that people?). We’ve come to learn that he was an architect of the Republican Party’s effort to end American democracy in 2021, and holds extreme views on a wide variety of subjects. But then, there was his first big bill - funding for Israel in the midst of a war. First he separated it from Ukraine funding, even over McConnell’s objections. Then he announced that to pay for it he wanted to cut funding for the IRS which would make it easier for wealthy Americans to cheat on their taxes.

Imagine this “moral man,” this “law and order” man, making his very first act something that would make it easier for the wealthiest among us to cheat on their taxes. Is there any way he could have more convincingly conveyed how unserious, ridiculous and corrupt he is? I don’t think there is.

Wait to all those battleground voters who have soured on the Congressional GOP come to understand who is leading them now.

Republicans’ Ongoing Betrayal Of The Country - On Wednesday night, the Senate, and Republicans themselves, began confronting the intolerable, dangerous and ongoing betrayal of the United States by some of their colleagues. Here’s Senator Dan Sullivan speaking on the Senate floor reminding us that by the end of the year 89% of all general officer positions in the US military will have been effected by Tuberville’s authoritarian blockade:

The Tuberville blockade has to be understood as only one part of what appears to be a coordinated campaign to undermine the United States and our democracy in a time of rising global instability and challenge. Right now Republicans are:

• Blocking hundreds of Pentagon appointees, weakening our military and encouraging our adversaries to challenge us across the world./

• Blocking over 60 State Department appointments, including 37 Ambassadorships and the Ambassadors to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Makes is far harder to achieve diplomatic solutions to our global challenges.

• Blocking critical cybersecurity legislation, have turned 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. What possible justification is there for any of this? Do they really want to see a mass terror attack on the US, drone strikes killing our leaders?

• Blocking the appointments of US Attorneys, as a way of weakening the Department of Justice and the rule of law more broadly

• Fighting additional aid to Ukraine, once again appeasing Putin and enabling Ukrainian genocide; holding hostage aid to Israel. In recent days Trump has made it clear he intends to withdraw from NATO if he comes to power.

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

• Elevating Insurrectionists including 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 to the Speaker’s Chair.

Keep working hard all. We cannot let them win - Simon