New Harris Econ Ad, GOP "Panic" About Dem Cash Advantage, Hopium Thursday for George Whitesides (CA-27)

Tom Bonier Joins Us Tomorrow Night For A Deep Dive On The 2024 Election - Join Us!

Happy Tuesday all. And another good Tuesday it is! Got a few things for you today:

New Harris Economic Ad, “Focused” - A new Harris-Walz campaign press release reads:

The Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad, “Focused,” as a part of its aggressive efforts to speak directly to voters about Vice President Harris’ economic agenda to lower costs and build up the middle class and contrast it with Donald Trump’s Project 2025 plans for tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.

Following Vice President Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she spoke about her roots being raised by a working mother in a middle-class neighborhood, Team Harris-Walz has blitzed the airwaves with economic ads to highlight the difference between her vision for an economy driven by a strong middle class and Donald Trump’s vision for a weak economy where only the ultra-wealthy do well. “Focused” marks the campaign’s fourth new economic ad since the convention – alongside “Opportunity,” “Everyday,” and “Full House” – bringing her message of building up the middle class directly to the American people, while Donald Trump is M.I.A. on the airwaves and can’t focus on voters’ top issue long enough to get through one speech.

Here’s the ad, and note that the three other Harris econ ads released since the Convention are linked to above:

Dem Financial and Organization Advantage Most Important Story In The Election Now - As Tom Bonier and I will discuss tomorrow night, a central reason we didn’t believe a red wave would come in 2022 was that after Dobbs various indications of intensity - performance in special elections, fundraising, voter reg changes, the early vote - favored us. In the final weeks before the election we kept repeating:

regardless of what the polling shows, what we are seeing in all this other data is heightened Dem intensity, and GOP struggle. While all that may change on Election Day itself, it is far more likely Election Day will be just one more day in an election that has looked far more favorable to Dems than polling or conventional wisdom holds since Dobbs.

Fast-forwarding to today, and this election, as I wrote to you last week, we are once again seeing these indications of intensity favor us. We are raising more money and have a far superior ground game. As Tom has started to document voter reg has started moving in our favor. We’ve seen Dem overperformance and GOP underperformance in elections all across the county these past two years. We are filling arenas. And unlike 2022 the polling today favors us.

Let’s once again study the Gallup chart I shared last week. Dem intensity today is far greater than GOP intensity, and is now near 2008 levels. As you can see this data is yet another reason why 2024 is nothing like 2016 or 2020:

The problem for Republicans is all that Dem intensity doesn’t just drive our strong performance in the special elections and the early vote, it translates into far more money, more paid communications, stronger organizations and campaigns and hundreds of thousands of volunteers who can now - using new tools like postcarding, remote texting, remote phonebanking - channel this intensity into direct voter contact in the battlegrounds. All this intensity can be more far more effectively channeled into making our campaigns stronger, making our close stronger and making it far more likely we win.

Here’s Politico today:

Republicans were already worried about a glaring financial gap even before Kamala Harris’ rise. Now, with the election just two months away, they found themselves in an even more dire position: Democrats have seen a flood of enthusiasm in recent weeks, they’re far outspending Republicans on air and their donors are more energized than ever — with campaign finance data showing a surge in grassroots fundraising in late July after President Joe Biden dropped out.

Panic is starting to set in.

……..

Democrats are reaching new heights, pounding the airwaves with multimillion-dollar ad blitzes while their GOP opponents are still scrambling for funds. In some key Senate battlegrounds, Democrats are so flush with cash that they are outspending Republicans by tens of millions on the air. That’s forced the GOP to lean heavily on super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money but must pay higher rates for the same ad slots.

This last part is important. Not all dollars are equal in campaigns. By law Federal campaigns - Presidency, Senate, House - pay what’s called the “lowest unit rate” for television ads, or the lowest rate available for a spot. SuperPACs do not get this opportunity, and in heavily contested media markets, 30 second spots get bid up to the point where a SuperPAC pays 3-4-5-6-7 times more a spot than the campaigns do. So our hard dollar advantage, the money you all raise that goes directly to candidates, is the best kind of money a party can have. In 2022 Republicans spent more money than we did, but because they are more reliant on SuperPACs and oligarchs and not regular people, we put more ads on the air and reached more voters. It is one of the reason we did better than people expected - because building your politics on the money and labor of every day people is a far better way to reach voters and to win, as we’ve all been seeing in recent years. Because of all of you we simply have a bigger and better political machine than they do, and this year the gap between what we have and what they have is even bigger than in previous years.

Where the next test of our machine will come in is in driving the early vote and working to win the election in October not on Election Day. In 2022, as Tom and I will discuss tomorrow night, this heightened post-Dobbs Democratic intensity really showed up in the early vote in the battleground states. Our strong early vote - the Vote on Day 1 effect I discuss here all the time - allowed our campaigns to move to lower propensity voters earlier than expected, which then just kept driving our turnout and performance higher and higher. We beat the red wave in the early vote in 2022, and we can and should be able to beat Trump and Republicans in the early vote this year. With all of this additional money we now have our capacity to turn lower-propensity voters into actual voters is greater than it's ever been which means that having our family aggressively vote early and vote on Day 1 will matter more this year than it ever has. This is what I mean by winning the election in October not on Election Day. We can and should win this thing in the early vote.

When we fight, we win. When we do more and worry less, we win. When we bust our ass and leave it all out that there on the playing field, we win. When MAGA is on the ballot, we win.

My message to all of you is this - this work we do, together, because of everything I’ve written above, will actually have more of an impact than it has ever had before. Which is why just have to keep doing more of it - more donations, more postcards, more texts, more phonecalls, more canvassing, more info warring - all of it. It is just simply true that the harder we all work the more likely it is we will have the election we all want to have. As the Vice President says, the torch wasn’t passed from Joe Biden to her. It was passed to all of us this year.

So let’s keep our heads down, keep working hard, and together go out and win this thing for our freedoms, our democracy and our future.

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.

Postcard Writers - You can use any colorful, upbeat postcard you want. If you would like to purchase postcards, we have special VOTE DAY 1 cards available through the Markers for Democracy Postcard ProShop, click here. You will need to set up an account in order to use this store. Please note that it could take a week for your order to arrive.

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. 18 days to go before early in voting begins everybody - time to get to work!

• Harris-Walz!!!!!! - $931,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel - Let’s get to $1m people!

• Winning The House - $980,000 raised, $1m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. 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 - $433,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $341,000 rised, $400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $155,000 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 17 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.

• 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