Our July Plans, Voting On Day 1, Dems Need A Big Reform and Renewal Agenda

I'm Heading to Raleigh, NC Friday, July 19 For An Event w/Anderson Clayton - Join Us!

Happy Tuesday all. Like all of you I am still processing the events of the past week, including more destructive decisions by the rogue Roberts Court. Above all else right now we have to remember the campaign goes on. We are 10 weeks from the earliest votes being cast in the election. While we are weary, and anxious, we cannot let up. So rest up these next few days, celebrate our independence and freedoms, fly your flag right-sided up, and come back next week ready to rumble.

Here at Hopium in July we are going to continue to support our core campaigns and state parties, and perhaps make some adjustments as we get fundraising data in and assess the new political landscape. Given how much money all of you have given (and it’s been a lot!!!), I’ve set new fundraising goals for the Democratic Convention in August. There’s going to be a big focus this month on our House candidates, as I’m shooting to release two interviews of the remaining eight each week. I’m also working to put together a weekly Thursday night Hopium phone bank and postcarding session for our targeted candidates that will begin late this month - more on that soon.

Here’s how you can support our candidates and state parties today:

• Biden-Harris - $555,000 today, $750,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Winning The House - $472,000 today, $750,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• North Carolina - $310,000 today, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $275,000 today, $300,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $108,000 today, $150,000 goal- Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb.

And 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 next week. I am going to do at least one shift - can you join me?

• Commit to Vote on Day 1, and get everyone you know to join you. More on that in the coming days (more on this below)

Save the following dates:

• Wed, July 10, 1pm ET - Hopium Founding Member Monthly Gathering

• Thur, July 11, 7pm ET - Hopium Paid Subscriber Monthly Gathering

• Tues, July 23, 7pm ET - Hopium-wide Monthly Gathering

I’m also really excited to be traveling to Raleigh, North Carolina to do an event with NC Dem Party Chair and Hopium superstar Anderson Clayton on Friday, July 19th from 5 to 7pm at Junction West, 310 S West St Suite 110. To attend this event you must have purchased a ticket for the big NC Dem Unity Dinner on Saturday night, July 20th with Nancy Pelosi, Josh Stein and many more (I will be there too). If you want to buy a ticket for the Unity dinner you can do so here, and you can sign up to come to our Friday night event here (but you must have a Unity Dinner ticket). Excited to be with North Carolina Dems the weekend after the GOP Convention - no better place to be.

As we are getting deeper into the general election it’s now time for us to begin doing more of the traditional voter contact work. Many of you have already been hard at work in various campaigns - thank you. I hope to be able to bring on someone from the Biden-Harris campaign to talk about their national volunteer program run through their Reach app. I hope all of you will sign up through their app and start planning on how are going to help them. I am going to do my first shift of battleground state calls next week for Biden-Harris, and hope to join a canvass the weekend I am in Raleigh. It’s part of why I hope to stand up Hopium phonebanks and postcarding this month. The election is here now and we all need to put our heads down and go to work.

Many of you have asked about post-debate polling and the state of the race and simply we don’t yet know where the polls are going are to end up. Some have shown gains for Biden, others are unchanged, some have shown Trump gaining. A new TIPP poll today had Biden gaining 2, up 43-41.

The Biden-Harris debate night live tracking of voter’s reactions did not see a big change in the race, and as we’ve been discussing here, Trump’s ugliness really came through. You can watch an interview with Biden polling chief Molly Murphy here:

Another thing we are going to start really focusing on now is what I call “Voting on Day 1.” Here’s what I wrote about Voting on Day 1 a few weeks ago:

Our elections have changed a lot in recent years. Most voters can now vote early in person or with no-excuse mail ballots. This has made it far easier for people to vote which is one reason we’ve seen such a big increase in turnout in recent years. It also has forced our campaigns to move away from Election Day focused get out the vote programs, and begin our work to get our folks to vote much earlier. The recognition that our Election Day is now as Tom Bonier calls it “just the last day of voting” is central to why Team Biden asked to move the debates up this year. People start voting on September 20th, and it was smart to move the debates to before people started voting.

This new early vote electoral system is important for Democrats, who traditionally have more episodic and new voters in our coalition. This extra time to do GOTV allows us, if we have the money and the volunteers, to reach down and touch more less likely voters than we could in the past, and this increases our turnout and helps us win.

Practically, the faster our voters vote the quicker our campaigns can reach and turnout these less likely voters. Every night campaigns get the list of people who voted that day, so when you vote early you come off the campaign GOTV rolls (and you stop getting canvassed and called!!!!) allowing the campaign to move on to other people who have not voted yet. So having Democrats vote as early as possible, on Day 1 as a I call it, is something that increases turnout for us and helps us win.

All of this is why I want to encourage everyone in the Hopium community to become an advocate for Voting on Day 1. Make sure you do it yourself. Educate your networks about why it matters:

Voting on Day 1 increases Democratic turnout and helps us win

Voting on Day 1 has other benefits. A heavy early turnout leads to stories about “hey everyone is voting” putting social pressure on people to go vote, which also increases turnout. Voting early in big numbers also becomes a very public affirmation that our democracy and election system is working as intended, which creates a greater incentive for people to vote and makes it far harder for the Republicans to cheat, disrupt or contest the election.

We have four months to develop an understanding among Democrats that Voting on Day 1 is a vital new tool we have to help us win and make it far more likely the 2024 election comes off without interference. There is a reason Trump hates non-Election Day in person voting so much - it makes our democracy work better and far harder for him to cheat or challenge the election results.

In our phonebanking and postcarding effort we will be primarily reaching prime Democrats to help them understand the importance not just of voting but Voting on Day 1. Helping people understand the importance of Voting on Day 1 is something we can all do. It is a “do more, worry less” action if there ever was one. Let’s not just do here, however, let us lead - let’s together making this Voting on Day 1 thing that all proud patriots and good Democrats do this year.

I am a member of the Hopium community and I will be voting on Day 1

After the rogue Robert’s Court’s assault on our democracy, it is very very clear that Democrats and Joe Biden need a big reform and renewal agenda. In my recent New Republic essay I wrote that Democrats should develop and campaign on a clear agenda to strengthen our democracy and tackle the corruption, extremism and rot (Roberts, Thomas, Alito) that has overrun our Capital:

If the primary job of the first term was about successfully getting America to the other side of Covid, the second term should be about mobilizing unprecedented resources around tackling the next two existential challenges of our time–countering climate change and accelerating the energy transition from fossil fuels, and ensuring that freedom and democracy prevail here in the United States and everywhere.

The president should talk directly and forcefully to the American people about the existential nature of these dual challenges, particularly the rise of what is perhaps the most serious threat we’ve ever seen to the American-led, rules-based order; and he should prepare Americans for what could be years or even decades of hot and cold conflict with authoritarians at home and abroad. The president began that process this year with his compelling speech near Valley Forge in early January.

As part that mobilization, we will need to keep our economy strong and prosperous, persistently proving that democratic capitalism remains the best system for human advancement; develop a long overdue national strategy to restore integrity to our daily discourse, making it far harder for authoritarian forces to manipulate and control speech in open societies; build greater governmentwide institutional capacity to advance pro-democracy initiatives here and across the world; and be direct in asking the American people, as President Kennedy once did, to become active partners in ensuring we prevail in these deeply consequential struggles in the coming decades….

…..The president should commit to making progress in at least two other areas during his second term—cleaning up a city and a democracy that have been weakened by corruption and illiberalism of all kinds, and raising American life expectancy so it is again at the level of peer nations’.

I think Joe Biden should promise to clean up the city he has so long been a part of. Among the things we can tackle are the influence of foreign money, the need to raise ethical standards at the Supreme Court, eliminating the debt ceiling and the ability to shut down the government, and the wild abuse of Senate holds on nominations. Perhaps Biden could set up a commission to make broader recommendations on how to modernize and reform a city desperately in need of it.

Such an agenda is not just needed and necessary, but we know from polling that tackling “political corruption” is a high priority for two of our most important target groups - independents and young people. If President Biden were to lead the charge it would be a way of taking his many years here - experience, wisdom, understanding of how DC works - and turning the issue of his age into a powerful weapon against the Republicans.

Finally, here is a short video I released a few weeks ago which reminds us of the stakes of this election and the fight we are in:

The Four Freedoms era has been a golden age in human history. Our job now is make sure it is there for our kids and our grandkids, and the kids and grandkids of the world, as it has been for us. It’s we are here, why we are all working so hard.

Rest up peeps, and let’s come back ready to go out there and win this thing, together - Simon