Let's Thank Joe Biden, Dems Fighting Hard For The Senate, Moving On From The Trump Trials

Welcome New Subscribers!/The State Of The Union Is Next Thursday - Make Your Plans To Watch

Happy March everyone!. A few things for you today:

Moving On From The Trump Trials. Let’s Focus On His Crimes and The 2024 Election - I think it’s been a core part of Trump’s strategy this year to get us to focus on the latest drama in the courts - this motion, that ruling, will he show? - and not on the crimes he’s committed or winning the 2024 election. It’s been a strategic diversion, and we need to stop playing along. Just as waiting for Mueller denied us time to talk about the underlining misdeeds and what we knew, the ESPN-like coverage of the wheels of sometimes justice turning is preventing us from focusing on more important things.

So, step 1. As I’ve been saying for some time, we should take these trials from the legal domain and bring them into the political one. We can and should be talking about what Trump did, not the trials. Here’s what we can and should be talking about:

• Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room, and is now an adjudicated rapist

• He and his family oversaw one of the largest financial frauds in American history, and he now owes hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties. He and Rudy together owe more than $700m for their various misdeeds, and his partners in his media company are now accusing him of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from them (see below - it’s incredible)

• He stole America’s secrets, lied to the FBI about it, shared them with others and should already be in jail, in pre-trial detention, for the grave risk he poses to the country

• He led a party-wide effort to overturn American democracy, led an armed attack on the Capital when all 435 Members were present, and has promised to end American democracy if he gets back into the Oval Office. Thousands of his associates have already been indicted, convicted or plead guilty to the insurrection, including dozens of Republican leaders in key battleground states across the US

• He and his family have corruptly taken more money from foreign governments than any political family in American history

• His campaign partnered with Russian intelligence in 2016 to corruptly win the election for him, and his party has once again partnered with Russian intelligence to smear Joe Biden and his family this year. Most of his top campaign officials from 2016 have been indicted and convicted for their illegal activities, including his initial National Security Advisor

• From 2016 to today Donald Trump has sided with Putin in his effort to take Ukraine against the clear security interests of the United States and the Western alliance

• He is singularly responsible for ending Roe, and stripping the rights and freedoms from more than half the population. And as we’ve learned in recent days ending Roe was only the beginning

Waiting for Mueller prevented us from talking to the American people about the facts we already knew about Trump’s rancid relationship with the Russian government. We should not repeat that consequential mistake again this year. We should talk incessantly with our fellow citizens about what is already known about him - that he is a rapist, an epic fraudster, a serial criminal, a traitor, an enemy of women, the most corrupt politician in American history, etc. All of this is enough to win the election with. We don’t need any more. Conditioning the discussion of these matters to the outcome of the criminal trials is what they want us to do. We don’t have to wait. Let’s talk about all this now. The American people deserve to know all this information before voting in 2024.

Step 2. We should move on from spending time reading about the motions, the daily machinations and use that time to talk about what’s above, and to increasingly focus on the elections themselves. They are here, now. It’s time to make winning the Presidency, flipping the House and keeping the Senate the central focus of our days. Can’t wait for Jack Smith any longer. We need to put our heads down, get to 55 and win all these elections in front of us. We should do more, wait for Jack Smith less.

Current Senate Landscape - It’s Close, Competitive - In keeping my own counsel from above, I’m going to focus more now on the 2024 elections. Today, we do a quick look at recent Senate polling. What we find is a close, competitive fight for the Senate, with perhaps more good news for us than them (all polls via 538):

AZ - Gallego 47%-Lake 37% - Noble Predictive

Gallego 46%-Lake 39% - Emerson

MD - Trone 42%-Hogan 42% - Emerson

MT - Tester is up 9 pts and 15 pts against possible opponents - Survey USA/KULR

NV - Rosen is up 2 pts, 6 pts, 11 pts vs various opponents - Emerson

OH - Brown is up 1-2 pts vs various opponents - Emerson (from January)

PA - Casey 47%-McCormick 40% - Public Opinion Strategies

Casey 49%-McCormick 39% - Emerson

TX - Allred 41%-Cruz 41% - UTexas at Tyler

WI - Baldwin 46%-Hovde 39% - Emerson College

I should note that while there is some good polling for Allred in Texas, there is also some showing Cruz significantly ahead. Need to see more data after the Democratic Primary next week.

All in all we should be happy with this picture, recognizing we have a lot of work ahead of us.

Trump Is A Serial Criminal, And Has Committed New Crimes - Yesterday, Trump fan boys and the founders of his Truth Social media company filed a law suit accusing him of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from them (note this about his crimes, not the legal process):

Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit on Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures, alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV’s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.

The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.

If DWAC shareholders approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price.

UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The story goes on to say that another investor has also now sued to block the merger, due to similar concerns about the Trump merger ripping him off. It’s astonishing stuff:

On Thursday, an investment vehicle controlled by former DWAC Chairman and CEO Patrick Orlando sued in Chancery court to block the merger unless it receives a larger number of shares from the combination than DWAC proposes, Reuters reported….

While out on bail, he keeps committing crimes. No person in American history has been treated this leniently by our justice system; no one has committed so many crimes of consequence.

Thank Joe Biden For Being A Good President - As we get ready for the big State Of The Union address next Thursday, our friends at Markers for Democracy have launched an inspired campaign to send post cards to Joe Biden thanking him for being a good President. Our friends Ellen Bender and Susan Wagner sent this to note to me:

In this moment of media fixation over President Biden (see,e.g.,@ezraklein) the postcard community is turning our Sharpies to a very special campaign:  Markers For Democracy has launched a campaign #postcardstobiden encouraging people to send the President a postcard expressing the fact that he has been an excellent President, you appreciate what he has done for the country and you want him to serve a second term. Please encourage others to do the same. Feel free to use your own language and send a postcard letting the President know you have his back.  Postcards should be addressed to President Biden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500

You can learn more about the amazing work Postcards for Democracy does here; and you can order cards at their pro-shop or by going to Etsy and search "postcards to voters”. Catch James Carville talking about the importance of postcarding on his podcast, minute 9, and below are some examples of cards that have already gone to President Biden in recent days. For all of you who are involved in organizations across the US please consider adopting this campaign. Let’s let the big guy know how grateful we are for his leadership in a time of enormous challenge, and how excited we are to help him win a second term.

Why I’m Optimistic About Winning This November - A round up of recent postings, essays and appearances. Lots to chew on her over the weekend:

Hopium Analysis/Us - Democrats Really Like Their President, Biden Breaks 80% in Michigan, Trump Continues To Struggle, Biden’s Successful Presidency Is Leaving Rs With Nothing To Run On

Biden’s Chances Are Much Stronger Than People Realize (MSNBC), 4 Things Biden Should Do Now (New Republic)

Hopium Analysis/Them - More Performance Problems For Trump and MAGA in South Carolina, Trump Is Not Strong, Or Winning - No Red Waving 2024 Please, Coming To Terms With Russia’s Penetration of Trump and The GOP, MAGA Descends Into Madness

Hopium Events/Appearances - Our Monthly Hopium Gathering With Special Guest Tom Suozzi, With Democrats, Things Get Better

Appearances - PoliticsGirl, MeidasTouch, Daily Kos’ The Brief and The Ezra Klein Show

The Most Powerful Democratic Political Machine We’ve Ever Seen - Read my recent post on the powerful political machine we building together, and let’s just keep staring at this jaw-dropping data from the Suozzi campaign:

In the space of five weeks people knocked on over 150,000 doors, made over 2 million phone calls, and wrote hundreds of thousands of postcards. Our campaign estimates that every Democrat household in the NY-03 received, on average, five handwritten postcards.

Here’s my discussion with Ben and Brett Meiselas from MeidasTouch about Joe Biden’s strong showing in Michigan, and Trump’s ongoing political struggles. This one if worth your time.

Let’s Do More, Worry Less - Here at Hopium we strive to channel all this worry and anxiety we have about our current moment into concrete action - do more, worry less - as we say here. I try to give you a bit of direction about where to channel your work by endorsing campaigns and projects, and providing you information to help you become a more effective information warrior for your democracy. Together we just made a big difference in NY-3, and if you are looking for ways to help right now here are three things you can do today:

Donate and join the Biden-Harris campaign - This is very important. The campaign comms and field operations are gearing up and it’s critical you receive info from the campaign every day, and start thinking about how you are going to be part of this effort as it expands. Please donate whatever amount you can - $5, $10 - just to get started.

Our community has already raised over $83,000 everyone for Biden Harris - thank you!

Make an early investment in North Carolina - North Carolina is our most important 2024 expansion state. Please consider donating today. For more on why I think North Carolina is so important watch my interview with Anderson Clayton, the dynamic new NC Democratic Party Chair.

Our community has already raised $74,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Spread Hopium - Encourage people in your networks to become a Hopium subscriber. Our goal is to get to 50,000 subscribers by March 31st (we are at 45,000 today). With your help we can hit our goal, grow our community and bring the upbeat, data-filled analysis here to more and more people.

Here’s Governor Newsom talking about the need to “worry less, do more” on Meet The Press this weekend:

March Event Dates - Three events on the books so far in March:

• Today, 1pm EST - Hopium Founding Members Get Together W/Simon

• Wed, March 6, 7pm EST - Hopium Paid Subscriber Monthly Gathering - Register

• Thur, March 7th - State Of The Union Address - Be Sure to Watch!!!!!

• Wed March 13, 7pm EST - Hopium Community-Wide Monthly Gathering - Register

Free subscribers can upgrade their membership to join these additional gatherings by clicking here.

Keep working hard all. So proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon