Happy Tuesday all. 6 days until the next debate, 14 days until Trump is sentenced for his 34 felony convictions, and 16 days until early, in-person voting begins. You may have also noticed that the serial criminal who leads the Republican Party was indicted last week by the United States government for actions akin to treason, and he broke federal laws on federal property in his ridiculous Arlington National Cemetery stunt. Not great timing for a guy about to be sentenced for the 34 felonies he committed in New York.
As I wrote yesterday, we enter the next phase of the election in better shape than Trump and the Republicans. We lead in national and battleground state polls. Senate polling is encouraging. We have financial, organizational and intensity advantages. We are more competitive on social media, and perhaps even have an advantage here now. Our ticket is dynamic, compelling and packing arenas. We are unified, and are confidently working to expand our coalition by welcoming Republicans opposed to MAGA. We have unprecedented labor support in the battlegrounds. The country is far better off today. We are talking about the issues voters care about and offering real, concrete ways to improve their lives. We are proud patriots, operating from love of country, love of one another and joy.
Meanwhile, what do they have? They have Trump. A rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon. An extremist, racist, and misogynist. A small man, a weak man, a cowardly man, a deeply unwell man, more desperate and pathetic it seems, everyday, a man who may be heading to prison in two weeks.
Here are the latest polling averages from 538:
National Vote Harris 47.0% - Trump 43.9% (+3.2)
Congressional Generic Dems 47.0% - GOP 44.4% (+2.6)
MI 46.4 - 44.1 (+2.3) PA 46.2 - 45.1 (+1.1) WI 47.5 - 44.3 (+3.2)
AZ 45.6 - 45.5 (+0.2) GA 46.3 - 45.9 (+0.4) NC 45.7 - 46.2 (-0.4) NV 45.8 - 45 (+0.8)
All recent polling has Harris up outside the margin of error in NE-2.
Harris and Walz are also seen far more favorably by voters. It’s another reason our close will be much stronger than theirs:
While I am deeply optimistic about our ability to win this race in the last two months we are still not where we want to be and have work to do. As folks are beginning to pay much more attention, and we have the debate next week, the calls, texts, doorknocks we make and postcards/letters we send really matter now. Make sure you sign up for a volunteer shift for Harris-Walz, or one of your favorite candidates, or come do some good with us this Thursday. However you do your work make sure you are doing it now - this work right now really matters.
In a new interview in Politico Playbook, Harris Senior Advisor David Plouffe talks about the home stretch:
How do you see these final nine weeks setting up?
I think the most important thing in the pursuit of 270 electoral votes is that Kamala Harris has multiple credible pathways to win. She has shown growing strength, which is important. You see both candidates have a pretty high vote share, so there's a small but important number of undecided voters, and this is a campaign that’s well positioned to reach them.
Because of the enthusiasm she’s generated?
Right now, I think more voters than not see her as kind of a breath of fresh air. She's handled herself exceedingly well in this hot spotlight. You know, at the end of the day, I think we were convinced there's enough voters in each battleground state that, all things being equal, would rather Donald Trump not return for a second time.
We have a market of voters out there who want to know more about her, who are open to voting for [her] and we've got, I think, a campaign and a candidate who can meet those voters where they are.
How does that enthusiasm translate to her campaign, operationally?
I can't overstate it — it makes impossible things possible. So say we want to go talk to [several] thousand voters today in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County or in [Wisconsin's] Dane County, or in Wake County, down in North Carolina, and the campaign can do that. Some people give dollars, and that's amazing. People will share social media content, and that's super important, because it creates kind of an army of people out there sharing good content. Those people reach other voters.
……..
Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote a memo this weekend touting, among other advantages, your superior organization. How does that factor in at the end of the day?
Basically the presidential campaign is seven gubernatorial races and one congressional race. Yes, television ads are important. And yes, national coverage is important. But you’ve got to think about it that way, which is, you want to be in as many corners of the state as you can, communities large, medium and small.
You want surrogates in those places; you want as good a ground operation as a state-based candidate would have. I mean, to me, that’s the standard you need to set ... Can you run just an incredibly intensive presidential campaign as if you were running a dead heat battleground state governor’s campaign? And I think we can.
And you need to do that in these seven key states you’re talking about. That, essentially, is where this race will be won or lost.
Yes. You’ve got seven states and the congressional district in Nebraska. And you’ve got different ways to win them.
I mean, a month, 40 days ago, the Trump campaign was spending as much time talking about New Jersey and New Mexico as North Carolina. … That ridiculous notion that he was going to expand the map has now been laid to rest.
As we’ve been doing in elections all across the country these last few years, we, Democrats, keep making impossible things possible. David Plouffe is talking about all of you, about all the work you do, the money you give, the info warring you do. You, we, keep making impossible things possible, and have one more big impossible thing to do in the coming days - elect Kamala Harris, keep the Senate and flip the House.
My latest interview with one of our 11 Hopium endorsed candidates in districts most likely to flip red to blue is above. This one is with former Congressman Mondaire Jones, and like so many of the others we’ve met, he is an impressive and compelling candidate. I hope you will watch and share. Please consider supporting Mondaire by donating to all 11 of our candidates with a single donation, donating to Mondaire directly or volunteering for him today.
Writer David Lurie has a really interesting new piece in Public Notice, “Kamala Harris is cutting off Trump’s oxygen.” Here is how it begins:
Kamala Harris is succeeding in accomplishing something none of Donald Trump’s adversaries have since 2016: Turning off his political oxygen supply by refusing to engage with his manufactured spectacles of insults and taunts, or with the often wholly substance-free issues that preoccupy the press.
As last Thursday’s CNN interview of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made clear, she’s resolutely unwilling to let the press — or Trump himself — set the agenda for her presidential campaign. In the process, she’s managed to blunt the tools Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents: drawing them into responding to his schoolyard slights, and turning the media’s pursuit of purportedly “legitimate” questions about his opponents — many of them formulated by GOP partisans — into political weapons.
Harris’s refusal to engage with Trump on his terms represents a break from how Democrats traditionally have dealt with him. In related news, her favorables continue to rise while an obviously flustered Trump flails at ghosts and searches in vain for a smear campaign that will allow him to regain the initiative.
Kamala Harris the prosecutor is not letting the criminal control the court room. She is controlling the court room. She is setting the terms of the national debate. She isn’t playing his games. And what this is doing is making him look small, irrelevant, foolish, “unserious” - as he is. She is breaking his spell. We are beginning to see the orange emperor has no clothes. We are pulling the curtain back from the Wizard. We are winning the election and they are losing.
Tom Bonier Joins The Hopium Community Wednesday Night at 7pm ET- My good friend and super smart data guy Tom Bonier will be joining us live this Wednesday night at 7pm. Tom will be discussing two new tools his team at TargetSmart are releasing in the coming days - one that tracks changes in voter registration across the country and another, TargetEarly, which will track the early vote.
We are going to use this event to review the analytical process Tom and I used to get the 2022 election right, and apply that same approach to this election. Tom will be coming with fresh and encouraging voter reg data from across the country, and we will also be spending time discussing why Voting on Day 1 is so important, and why we should all be working to win this election in October and not on Election Day.
Register for our event here. It’s going to be a good one! For those who cannot make it live a recording will be shared here on Hopium.
Thursday, 730pm ET - Postcard and Phonebank for George Whitesides (CA-27) - So we are back at it Thursday for an evening of work for George Whitesides, our terrific candidate in CA-27. You can register for our event here, and note when doing so you can now select which breakout room you want to join. We have trainings for both activities live each evening, and for those who are more experienced you can a select a breakout room without training and just get to work. Visit here to learn more about ordering postcards for these events. Each week we will be reaching our to core Democratic voters and encouraging them to Vote on Day 1 and letting them know when early in person and mail/drop box voting begins in their states.
Most weeks we will hear directly from the candidate at the beginning of our session, just a few minutes after 730pm, so plan on joining us on time each week. At the end of each session, after we’ve done our work, I will be providing a 10 minute overview of the current national political landscape. I will also be joining each breakout room and saying hello and thank you to everyone. So in addition to helping out on Thursdays you will be getting live political updates from the ground and from Washington, DC.
To prep for Thursday watch my interview with George. You can learn more about him, donate or volunteer too. If you want to make a single donation to all 11 of our courageous candidates working to flip the House this November you can do that here. I’m excited to announce that we have now raised more than $1 million for our House candidates since we began this campaign to help take back the House a few months ago. Thank you all. Time and again when the Hopium community is called, you have answered, powerfully.
A full schedule of all our upcoming Thursday events with links to register is now up here on the Hopium site. Here it is:
9/12 - Mondaire Jones (NY-17) - Register here
9/19 - Rudy Salas (CA-22) - Register here
9/26 - Laura Gillen (NY-04) - Register here
10/3 - Adam Gray (CA-13) - Register here
10/10 - Sue Altman (NY-07) - Register here
10/17 - Tony Vargas (NE-02) - Register here
These Thursday night events have become really fun, a great way to hangout each week, and we get a lot of work done. Hope you will join us this week and take one more action to ensure Hakeem Jeffries is the one standing behind President Kamala Harris when she gives her first State of the Union Address next year.
Supporting Hopium-backed Candidates and State Parties, Working From Joy - In the spirit of not letting up, “doing something” as Michelle Obama said and leaving it all on the playing field as Gov Walz has encouraged, I again make my pitch for the candidates and state parties we’ve been working for this year. A week ago Saturday I offered an in-depth post on the strategy behind our candidate and state party endorsements, including our Presidential battleground “check” and “checkmate” strategy. 16 days to go before early in voting begins everybody - time to get to work!
Harris-Walz!!!!!! - $933,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel - Let’s get to $1m people!
Winning The House - $986,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Sign Up For Our Thursday Night Calling and Postcarding. Watch our recent discussion with Leader Hakeem Jeffries. To go deeper watch one of our interviews with our great candidates - Janelle Bynum (OR-5), George Whitesides (CA-27), Kirsten Engel (AZ-06) Will Rollins (CA-41), Laura Gillen (NY-04), Rudy Salas (CA-22), Josh Riley (NY-19), Tony Vargas (NE-02), Adam Gray (CA-13) and Sue Altman (NJ-07).
North Carolina - $434,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton
Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $342,000 rised, $400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego
Nebraska/Blue Dot - $156,000 raised, $175,000 goal- Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb
Here are ways you can do even more:
Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you. Early voting begins in three states on September 20th - just 16 days away!
Watch my With Dems presentation on the greatness and goodness of the Democratic Party and this six minute video on the incredible stakes in this election. Also catch the first episode of my new Closing Strong election series with Tara McGowan. In this episode we talk to Anderson Clayton and Makena Kelly of Wired.
Help grow the Hopium community. Use this link to encourage others sign others up. You can gift a subscription to a friend or student here and get group rates too. If you have changed credit cards or moved you can you update your payment information or check your renewal status follow these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep our community growing the Hopium flowing!
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
Making Impossible Things Possible, My Interview With Mondaire Jones (NY-17), Trump Will Be Sentenced For 34 Felony Convictions In Two Weeks