No Putting Lipstick On The Terrible Trumpian Pig, Making July Count, Helping Biden-Harris Win This November

NATO has kept America safe and free for 75 years. There is much to celebrate this week

Happy Tuesday all. It’s great to be back with all of you. Got a few things for you today:

First, Some Toplines:

• Another Good Jobs Report, Joe Biden Is A Successful President - On Friday we were reminded that the economy just keeps growing and producing jobs, wage growth remains strong and robust, inflation was zero last month and the American economy continues to be the “envy of the world.”

• With Democrats, Things Get Better - My big presentation on the greatness and goodness of the modern Democratic Party. Essential viewing for all members of the Hopium community. Newly updated a few week ago.

• Dems Need A Big Reform and Renewal Agenda - Some thoughts about a possible addition to our 2024 offering - a big agenda to tackle corruption, clean up our the Capital and strengthen our democracy.

• My Latest Take On The 2024 Election - Posted yesterday - failure of the European far right in recent months similar to MAGA’s ongoing failures and underperformances here, central reason for my ongoing optimism about the November election; Biden likely to lose 1-3 pts post-debate, meaningful but not catastrophic, while Trump continues to show significant weakness; 538 election forecast still shows a 50-50 race.

Trump Runs Away From MAGA And…Trump - It has been a central understanding of our Hopium work that MAGA is a political loser, and that the ongoing Republican embrace of this extremist and unpopular ideology has help fuel our victories in 2018, 2020 and in our remarkable ongoing wins across the US post-Dobbs. That when it comes time to vote, not just answer a poll, the Putinist far-right underperforms here in the US and in Europe, as voters understand the danger and choose better options. It is something we even saw in the GOP primaries, as Haley repeatedly outperformed expectations and Trump repeatedly underperformed public polls.

There is now evidence that the Trump campaign, who has likely been polling a lot these last few weeks, has come to understand what a stone cold general election loser MAGA and Trumpism is and are trying to, desperately and pathetically, run away from it. First came this Truth Social post a few days back, so full of ridiculous Trumpian bullshit:

Last night the NYT dropped this bit of reporting on the new GOP platform:

My expectation is that we will see other signs of distancing in the coming days, including potentially in Trump’s VP pick. The Trump campaign is clearly trying to win this thing, softening the edges of their most extreme positions. The challenge they have, as we saw in Trump’s bat-shit crazy debate performance, is their historically dangerous and ugly candidate - rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon, extremist, racist - has already told us what they want to do:

They want Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. The economy to crash. Americans to lose more rights and freedoms. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist's baby to term, and for more women to die on operating room tables. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. Verified rapists in positions of authority. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Huge new tariffs which raise prices on everything, destroy the global economy which has made us prosperous while enacting big tax cuts for the wealthiest. Books banned across the US. Seniors to pay more for insulin and prescription drugs. Foreign governments free to pollute our daily discourse and harass our citizens. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to get pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.

I want to reiterate that this new Trumpian effort to distance him from his own extremism is a sign of desperation and weakness, not savvy and strength. It’s an acknowledgement that they now understand they’ve been embracing a losing politics; and we, together, in the months ahead are not going to allow them to put fancy new lipstick on this terrible Trumpian pig, are we? We know who he is, what he wants to do and now we know they understand that it is going to be hard for them to win with him at the top of the ticket.

I view this new uncomfortable Trumpian waddle as an encouraging sign, as it confirms that we have the tools we need to win at our disposal.

Meet David Lammy, The New Foreign Secretary of the UK - As the world descends on Washington this week for the 75th Anniversary of NATO, meet the inspiring new Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and a leader of the new Labour government, David Lammy:

Stat Of The Day - Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote in the last four Presidential elections, Republicans 46.5%. It is our best showing over 4 elections since FDR’s 4 elections from 1932 to 1944. America is a center-left country today.

In the three elections when Joe Biden has been on the ballot as either President or Vice-President Democrats have received 52.9%, 51.1% and 51.3% of the national popular vote. What will it be this year?

Making July Count - Friends, we just did a remarkable job together here making June count. In five weeks from late May to June 30th we raised over $1m for our candidates and party committees. Many of you have been out there hustling for candidates, writing postcards, canvassing, calling and texting. We launched our Winning the House campaign which brought in more $500,000 for our 12 Hopium-endorsed candidates with the best opportunity to flip seats and help us take back the House. We added the blue dot in Nebraska to our “checkmate” state strategy, one designed to get us to 270 electoral college votes and win the election. We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Biden-Harris, including more than $100,000 in the days after the debate. When called once again the Hopium community answered. And today I am calling again by launching a new “Make July Count” campaign, with new goals for July 31st, below.

As I’ve been writing, we cannot let up now, not for a moment. We are deep into the 2024 election now and while it is summer, and we are not all on same page today, we cannot stop working to make the election everything we want it to be. So please do something this week to support this new campaign, and be on the look out for many more interviews of our endorsed House candidates in the coming days. Trying to get the remaining eight done by early August.

We can do this people!

• Biden-Harris - $565,000 today, $650,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Winning The House - $480,000 today, $600,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. We’ve also raising more then $40,000 into the individual House campaigns (you can either give to all 12 or each one individually)

• North Carolina - $313,000 today, $400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $281,000 today, $350,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $110,000 today, $150,000 goal- Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb

Here’s how you can do even more:

• Watch our interviews with Janelle Bynum (OR-5), George Whitesides (CA-27), Kirsten Engel (AZ-06) and Andrei Cherny (AZ-01)

• Volunteer for the Biden-Harris campaign - Their phonebanks into the battleground are ratcheting up this week. I’m going to do at least one shift - can you join me?

• Join me and Anderson Clayton in Raleigh on Friday, July 19th by donating to the NCDP Unity Dinner and signing up here

• Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you

Finally help me spread Hopium and grow this plucky community. Sign others up to be a Hopium subscriber at this link. Note that options for group and gift subscriptions are available to those who want to bring friends and colleagues into the Hopium community. Click on the group and gift tabs here to learn more. To update your payment information or check your renewal status follow these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep the Hopium flowing and our community growing!

More Notes on Biden’s Health, Fitness to Serve, And The Discussion Happening Inside The Democratic Party Right Now and Here At Hopium - So at the risk of re-opening a contentious discussion here, I offer an update to my call yesterday for the Administration to be more forthcoming about the President’s health to help assuage the concerns of many after the debate.

First, the Administration did release more information yesterday, and it was helpful. Here’s Lawrence O’Donnell last night reviewing what happened yesterday:

Second, based on feedback from many of you, I’ve removed references to the discussions I’ve had with physicians and medical professionals and my own family’s experience with aging from my post yesterday. It is paramount that we allow the President and his doctors to speak to his health, and speculation from others, including me, is inappropriate. I apologize for doing this, and now understand why it was wrong to do so.

Third, the issue of Biden’s age, health and fitness is not going to go away. It is now a central issue of the 2024 campaign, and like any other issue, it has to be understood and managed, and strategies need to be developed to improve our position. Since Hopium began I’ve offered suggestions to Bidenworld and Democrats on a wide range of issues, strategies and tactics. I talk to folks in the Administration and on the campaign all the time, kicking stuff around, as we all try to find the best way to navigate these challenging times and win, together. Sometimes they even listen to me.

Yesterday I offered my advice about how to better handle issues around the President’s health and fitness as I began preparing to defend him in my many media appearances this week. Look at this data from the recent CBS/YouGov poll. On an issue as important as fitness to serve, we are not where we want to be and have work to do here (I’ve been saying the same thing about our standing on the economy since the very first days of Hopium):

The debate changed the election, and we lost a bit of ground. And critically, today, it’s only a bit of ground, ground that that can be made up by understanding how the election has changed, and implementing strategies to improve our position to ensure the Biden-Harris ticket wins. That’s what I was doing yesterday, and what I will continue to do every single day as the election evolves and changes until we win this thing, together, in November.

As I said yesterday soon, very soon, we will need to put our differences aside and come together as a party in order to have the election we all want to have this year. Key to this is respect - respect for the President, for our party leaders, for each other, for the importance of discussion and deliberation in a democracy.

I loved this closing paragraph from Timothy Snyder’s compelling Substack post this morning:

I don’t fear this election. I think people will work hard and the right side will win. My concern is this: that the people on the right side, motivated by fear, will miss their chances. Giving the president options is an act, after all, of loyalty rather than disloyalty: to the man, to the office, to the legacy, and to the country.

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