New OH Ad, VA Early Vote Starts Next Friday, Blinken Speech, What Young Americans Face

Welcome New Subscribers! New Pods Too

Friends, a few things today:

Upcoming Political Briefings

• Tue, September 19th, 7pm ET - Hopium Paid Subscriber Political Briefing and Hangout - RSVP here.

• Tue, September 26th, 7pm ET - Full Hopium Community Political Briefing and Discussion - RSVP here.

New Pods - Had a great discussion this week with the Washington Post’s Jen Rubin for her new podcast, The Green Room. We go deep on the opportunities the GOP’s abortion extremism offers us this cycle. To promote my new in-depth talk with Reed Galen for the Lincoln Project podcast, the L/P team released this video clip:

Enjoy these great discussions with very smart political observers and let me know what you think….

Great New Ad in OH - Republican extremism on women’s reproductive health and abortion has opened up an entire new conversation in our domestic politics. It is still very early in that conversation, and we are finding our voice, together, as we go. This compelling new ad from Ohioans United for Reproductive Health shows the potential power of this issue in our politics now. Do watch - it’s really really good:

Virginia Early Vote Starts Next Friday, September 22nd - Voting in Virginia begins next Friday! I will have more to say about this critical election tomorrow, but please start putting aside time for calling/texting/canvassing/postcarding. To win we need to have a very strong first week so plan on putting in time however you are going to help out next week - don’t wait.

And if you live in Virginia please plan on voting on Day 1 - Friday, or the weekend. When you vote your name comes off the GOTV rolls and allows the campaign to move on to reach other voters. When you vote early, Day 1, you help our campaigns increase Democratic turnout. An early vote makes more voters for Democrats, which is why from now on, whenever we all vote, wherever we vote, we need to be voting on Day 1. Voting on Day 1 helps us win.

Important New Speech By Secretary of State Tony Blinken - In her newsletter this morning Heather Cox Richardson writes:

In a major speech today at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained the place at which the United States finds itself in both foreign and domestic affairs. He told the audience that the end of the Cold War, a period of competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies, ushered in “the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalization, human rights.” That postwar period did, indeed, lift more than a billion people from poverty, eliminate deadly diseases, and usher in a period of historically low conflicts between nations, despite challenges such as the 2008 global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and regional conflicts like those in Rwanda and Iraq.

“But,” Blinken said, “what we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post–Cold War order. It’s the end of it.”

The relative geopolitical stability of the post–World War II years has given way to the rise of authoritarian powers, he said. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is the most immediate threat to “the international order enshrined in the UN charter and its core principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence for nations, and universal indivisible human rights for individuals.” But the People’s Republic of China “poses the most significant long-term challenge,” he said, “because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic, the diplomatic, the military, the technological power to do just that.”

In the coming days take the time to read the Secretary’s speech. This idea that we are in a new age, a post-post-Cold War era with new challenges which require new reponses, is a central reason why I began Hopium. From my original welcome message:

I am calling it Hopium Chronicles because I want this to be a journey guided by hope and optimism, of belief in ourselves, in love of country and a clear understanding of the nature of the conflict we are in. I have become convinced that part of Greater MAGA’s strategy is to intentionally poison our discourse with negative sentiment every day. They want us to feel bad about America, our democracy, our leaders, our institutions, our success, each other, ourselves. We cannot let them do that any more. While they talk American down every day, we need to talk it up. While they spread lies, we respond with truth and data. Hopium is a rejection of the darkness they are trying to spread. It is a way of standing up for our great country and its remarkable people. It is the key to how we win.

Republicans Knew Jan 6th Was Coming - A new book about Senator Mitt Romney has a startling revelation. On January 2nd, 2021, the Senator sent the following text to then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

Republicans all knew what was going to happen on January 6th, and did nothing.

What Young Americans Face, And Why They Need To Be At The Center of Our Politics - Climate change. Insurrection. COVID. School shootings. Abortion extremism. The harms of social media…..young Americans are facing an extraordinary set of challenges to their safety and well-being that need to become our challenges, our fight too. Consider this passage from an article in Politico today, The End of Roe Is Having A Chilling Effect on Pregnancy:

Polling conducted in August by my organization, All In Together, in partnership with polling firm Echelon Insights found that 34 percent of women aged 18-39 said they or someone they know personally has “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.” Put another way, poor or unavailable maternal health care post-Dobbs is leading people to alter some of their most important life choices.

For young people, the maternal healthcare crisis is deeply personal. More than a third of young people and 22 percent of young women told us they have personally dealt with or know someone who has “faced constraints when trying to manage a pregnancy-related emergency.” And 23 percent of 18- to 39-year-old women say they have themselves or know someone else who has been unable to obtain an abortion in their state — a number almost three times higher than respondents in other age groups.

Or this video from UNC yesterday during it’s second lock down already this semester:

Their fight is our fight. We can and must do better for the young people in this country. These issues, this fight, young Americans must at the very center of everything we do over the next 14 months. They are counting on us, and we cannot let them down.

Keep working hard all. The work we do together really matters - Simon