Republicans Celebrate Zelenskyy's Visit By Doing Putin's Bidding, VA Early Vote Has Begun!

Encouraging NH Poll - Biden Leads Trump 52-40

Friends,

A few things today:

Upcoming Events (have added 2 new ones)

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

• Tue, October 3rd, 7pm ET - The Virginia Elections - A Briefing and Call To Action - More Info Soon

• Wed, Oct 11th, 7pm ET - Our good friend Tom Bonier joins me for a look at polling, election data and our ongoing strong Dem performance since Dobbs - More Info Soon. Am excited for this one - haven’t been together with Tom in a while.

Voting Has Begun In Virginia! - The Virginia early vote is our next big test. Make sure you have your plan to help in place - donate, canvass, calls/texts, postcards - whatever you can do. It all matters. Let’s work to drive the early vote hard this first week. As we’ve been discussing, voting on Day 1 and driving the early vote will increase Democratic turnout and help us win. If you plan on helping in Virginia, do it this week if you can. Please don’t wait.

And a huge thank you to the many members of the Hopium community who’ve already been working on these critical races over the past few months.

New CNN Poll in NH Has Biden Up Over Trump 52-40 - A new, large-sample CNN/University of New Hampshire poll has Biden up over Trump by 12 points, 52-40. For reference, Biden won the state in 2020 by 7 points, and Clinton won it by less than a point in 2016. It’s encouraging news, and another sign of that Democratic overperformance we’ve been seeing across the US since Dobbs.

It’s also a reminder that in 2022 the election was not nationalized, and that there was a bluer election inside the battleground and a redder election outside. While Democrats lost ground in the national popular vote from 2020, we gained ground in many of the most important battleground states which saw ads and highly contested races - AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. We got all the way up to 59% in CO, 57% in PA, 55% in MI, 54% in NH. Part of the reason so many commentators got the election wrong last time was due to this lack of nationalization. National polling just wasn’t able to capture these strong Dem gains in the battleground, something that may be happening again this year.

In my writing I’ve argued that the battleground has gotten much harder for Trump because of our strong showing there last year. It appears to be true in this NH poll - let’s see what other states show in the coming months. Will be interesting to see if national media orgs start doing state by state general election polling given that the Republican primary appears to be largely settled.

As of right now there are only seven 2024 Presidential battleground states - AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI. It’s possible the map changes as we go deeper into the election but for now this is it. It remains remarkable that in this huge country so few people will experience a full on Presidential campaign. I have long worried that the narrowness of the Presidential map has contributed to the distance many Americans feel to Washington, and to politics more broadly. It’s just not healthy that so few Americans get to really be part of the campaign to pick their President. But here we are, and this NH poll is a great way to end the week.

Republicans Do Putin’s Bidding Again and Again - Perhaps the hardest thing for me to understand about this terrible age of MAGA is how the party of Reagan became such a loyal ally of the genocidal, American-hating Putin. Consider what happened this week. The UN General Assembly brought the whole world to America, and Zelenskyy to Washington. What message about America, and Ukraine did the Republicans choose to send while the whole word is visiting? They

• Denied the opportunity for Zelenskyy to address a joint session of Congress

• Cut Ukraine funding from the budget bill

• Allowed the Defense bill to fail in the House, and doubled down on their blockade of Pentagon appointments

• Threw the US House and our government into extraordinary chaos, chaos that could ultimately hamper our military support of Ukraine

• And Trump openly praised Putin

So, in this critical week where our President went to the UN to make the case for continued military and political support for Ukraine, the Republicans attempted to embarrass/undermine our military, Zelenskyy/Ukraine, our President and the United States itself. It’s far more than Putin could have ever wished for, and another reason why our work together here matters so much.

Keep working hard all - Simon