Some Prices Are Coming Down, The General Election Has Begun, Elon Musk Is A White Supremacist
NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton Joins Us on Tue, Nov 28th
Happy Saturday all! A few things this morning:
With Inflation at Zero Last Month, Means Some Prices Have Begun To Come Down - The White House shared this chart this morning. As I wrote the other day, we are getting to the other side of the COVID/Russian invasion of Ukraine economic shocks. So great to see.
The General Election Has Begun - With the November, 2023 elections behind us, and Trump likely to be the official Republican nominee within the next 2-3 months, for all intents and purposes the general election has begun. I talked about how we are entering a new phase in the 2024 election cycle in this Semafor article, The Biden campaign wants to remind voters why they turned on MAGA, which includes this passage:
“The general election has begun,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told Semafor. “It’s time now for the campaign to turn on, to adopt a general election posture, and to not only make their case, but to engage Trump more aggressively — which they’re now doing, and which I think is going to be effective and important.”
Starting to put together some rough plans for our work together in 2024, and will be sharing them in the coming days. Big year ahead!
Recent, Relevant Hopium Work
Tues, Nov 28th 7pm - Winning North Carolina - NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton Joins The Hopium Community - This is an important gathering and I hope as many of you can join us as possible. As we look to 2024, North Carolina is the most important expansion state in the battleground, and a place where our work can really make a difference. Anderson is the dynamic new 25 year old chair of the NC Democratic Party, and is in it to win it. Really excited for this discussion as winning North Carolina is going to be a major part of what we do together next year.
Learn more about Chair Clayton here, and register for our live discussion here.
Elon Musk Is A White Supremacist - The LA Times has a very good new article on our growing awareness that one of the most powerful men in America is a active and serious white supremacist. It still remains shocking to me. As of this morning the following major corporations have pulled their advertising from Twitter: Apple, Comcast, Disney, IBM, Lion’s Gate, Paramount……
An excerpt from the article:
The question of how you solve a problem like Elon Musk has crossed the line from an amusing little parlor game to an issue with serious implications for anyone doing business with him, including major corporations and the U.S. government.
Little that Musk says or does escapes popular notice, but a tweet he posted Wednesday on X, the platform he owns which was formerly known as Twitter, is in a category all his own.
Musk replied to a user’s antisemitic tweet accusing Jewish communities of “pushing the exact kind of ...hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The user went on to accuse “western Jewish populations” of supporting the flooding of the U.S. by “hordes of minorities.”
Musk’s reply was: “You have said the actual truth.” Within hours, his tweet had attracted more than 6 million views.
Monitors of far-right tenets recognize this one as the “great replacement theory.” It holds that Jews are behind a movement to import nonwhite immigrants in order to diminish the political standing of the white majority.
The American Jewish Committee, in a tweet of its own, called it “the deadliest antisemitic conspiracy theory in modern U.S. history.”
A white nationalist and Nazi claim, it was the theme of the antisemitic “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and the motivation behind the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, in which 11 worshipers were shot to death.
Still stunned by all this.
Have a good weekend all - Simon
Joe Biden published an important op-ed in the Washington Post today on the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Please read it here - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/18/joe-biden-gaza-hamas-putin/ and let's discuss in the coming days.
Very happy to see you're now posting to Threads, Simon.
I imagine you'll share President Biden's pitch-perfect op-ed in today's Washington Post, but for those who haven't yet seen it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/18/joe-biden-gaza-hamas-putin/
He writes with such wisdom and humanity about an enormously complex and difficult situation. Especially glad to see him address the critics who call for a cease-fire without acknowledging the consequences: "As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace. To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again." And thankful to hear him state clearly and unequivocally to Bibi and to the world: "A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people."
I don't envy the hand he's been dealt (just like when he first took office in 2021), but I'm beyond grateful for his leadership.