The General Election Begins, Backing Gallego, Hopium's 1st Birthday!

Welcome New Subscribers!/Hopium Paid Subscriber Gathering Tonight

Happy Wednesday all! Got a few things for you today:

The General Election Begins - With Haley dropping out this morning, the 2024 general election has officially begun. We enter the general with the Presidential election close and competitive; Biden a successful President, with a strong re-election argument and a Democratic Party fired up and on a remarkable winning streak; Trump, far weaker, more degraded, more extreme and more dangerous than 2020, leading a party that is broke, and broken.

In every way possible, as we enter the general election, I would much rather be us than them.

It’s critical that everyone here donate and join the Biden-Harris campaign as soon as you can (you can do so here). As the campaign ramps up they will be providing daily message guidance and volunteer opportunities. The campaign will become our mothership, the place driving all Democratic politics soon. It’s time to get on board and get ready to rumble. You can also learn how how to write a postcard to Joe Biden thanking him for his courageous leadership in a time of enormous challenge, below.

Coming on the heels of our community’s electoral successes over the past year, our next project is backing Rep. Ruben Gallego in his drive to become the next Senator from Arizona. Please donate to Ruben today. Due to Senator Sinema staying in the race for so long Ruben is a bit behind financially and organizationally. Supporting him now will help him catch up and get him to the place he needs to be to win. Current polling there is very encouraging but Arizona remains a very competitive state, and not only do we need to win this Senate seat our support of Ruben will help Biden-Harris in this must-win state and our efforts to flip 2 Arizona House seats and take back the House. I will be providing recommendations for volunteering in the coming days.

With the help of many in the Hopium community Rudy Salas finished second last night in CA-22 and moves on to the general election. Thank you all - this was another win for the proud patriots of our spirited community.

Hopium Chronicles turns 1 tomorrow! I launched this thing a year ago with this welcome post, and my get to 55 memo. I’m so proud of what we’ve done together, the community we’ve built. Here’s what I wrote last March:

Though I’ve been in politics for a long time, my journey fighting the “red wave” over the past year changed my understanding of the work that needs to get done to defeat MAGA, tell our inspiring story more effectively, and ensure that freedom and democracy prevail.

Basically I came to understand that our politics was changing and I had to change with it. It led me to conclude that my old organization, NDN, which I founded back in 1996, was no longer the right vehicle for me. It did a lot of good over a long period of time, and we built a remarkable community there. As I discuss in my recent interview with Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, I feel like we are entering a new political era in America, one that requires new strategies and approaches. NDN was built for a different era, and it had a different mission. I needed to do something new, organize my work in new ways. So here I am. With all of you.

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.

I will be having more to say about year 2 of Hopium in the coming days, at our paid subscriber gathering tonight, and in our broader Hopium-wide gathering next Wednesday. For those coming tonight we will have a special guest to help us mark our anniversary - so please do register for our event. It’s going to be a fun one, and we have much to celebrate, together. I expect this one to sell out tonight so if you want to come please register as soon as you can and plan on signing on by 655pm EST.

If you want to mark our anniversary by becoming a paid subscriber you can do so here. Your financial support allows me to do this work, and keeps the Hopium flowing! Thank you to all of you who have been of this wonderful experiment so far. We’ve done a lot of good together but as all know our most important work lies ahead.

Let’s Do More, Worry Less - Here at Hopium we strive to channel all this worry and anxiety we have about our current moment into concrete action - do more, worry less - as we say here. Here are a few things beyond donating to Ruben Gallego you can do today:

Donate to and join the Biden-Harris campaign - This is very important. The general election has begun and it’s time to get on board the Biden-Harris train. Please donate whatever amount you can - $5, $10 - just to get started.

Our community has already raised over $95,000 for Biden Harris - thank you!

Make an early investment in North Carolina - North Carolina is our most important 2024 expansion state. Please consider donating today. For more on why I think North Carolina is so important watch my interview with Anderson Clayton, the dynamic new NC Democratic Party Chair.

Our community has already raised $81,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Thank Joe Biden For Being A Good President - As we get ready for the State Of The Union this Thursday, our friends at Markers for Democracy have launched an inspired campaign to send post cards to Joe Biden thanking him for being a good President. Our friends Ellen Bender and Susan Wagner sent this to note to me:

In this moment of media fixation over President Biden (see,e.g.,@ezraklein) the postcard community is turning our Sharpies to a very special campaign:  Markers For Democracy has launched a campaign #postcardstobiden encouraging people to send the President a postcard expressing the fact that he has been an excellent President, you appreciate what he has done for the country and you want him to serve a second term. Please encourage others to do the same. Feel free to use your own language and send a postcard letting the President know you have his back.  Postcards should be addressed to President Biden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500

You can learn more about the amazing work Postcards for Democracy does here; and you can order cards at their pro-shop or by going to Etsy and search "postcards to voters”. Catch James Carville talking about the importance of postcarding on his podcast, minute 9, and below is an examples of cards that have already gone to President Biden. For all of you who are involved in organizations across the US please consider adopting this campaign. Let’s let the big guy know how grateful we are for his leadership in a time of enormous challenge, and how excited we are to help him win a second term.

Spread Hopium - Encourage people in your networks to become a Hopium subscriber. Our goal is to get to 50,000 subscribers by March 31st (we’re at 46,000 today!). With your help, we can hit our goal, grow our community, and bring the upbeat, data-filled analysis here to more and more people. You can also become a paid subscriber which helps us grow here.

My New Republic Essay, “4 Things Biden Should Do Now” - I contributed an essay to a recent pre-State Of The Union package of essays in the New Republic. My essay made 4 recommendations to the big guy. Here are the two regarding ways his argument and agenda can evolve in the coming months:

Anchor the Second Term Around Countering Climate Change and the Fight for Democracy.

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 government-wide 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.

Offer a Big Reform/Clean Up Washington Agenda, and a Strategy to Raise Life Expectancy.

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.

The president faces a similar opportunity to address an unacceptable decline in American life expectancy in recent years. Life expectancy continues to decline, and we’ve fallen behind peer nations. We should use this as a sign that a new emphasis on the health and well-being of Americans is needed, and the president should commit to reversing this decline in his second term. All ideas need to be on the table—better mental health and addiction recovery programs, more aggressive steps to stop the flow of foreign drugs into the country, better gun laws, the restoration of women’s reproductive freedom and addressing unacceptable levels of maternal mortality, fighting to restore trust in vaccines and the broader concept of public health.

Joe Biden has largely risen to the challenges presented to him and followed through on the promises he made in 2020. Now he has two more important challenges he must meet—build a campaign that can go big, unleash the patriotism and love of country that is driving Democratic politics today and make 2024 a clear repudiation of MAGA; and give us a second term that ensures that the opportunities we’ve all had are there for our kids and grandkids. As successful as he has been, it is possible that Joe Biden’s most important work still lies ahead of him.

You can read the rest of my essay here, and feedback is encouraged. Be sure to make plans to watch The State Of The Union live on tomorrow, and as we discussed Monday, get ready to be part of the team that sells Joe Biden’s message to our networks in the days to come.

Why I’m Optimistic About Winning This November - A round up of recent postings, essays and appearances. Enjoy:

Hopium Analysis/Us - Biden Leads in 2 New Polls, Democrats Really Like Their President, Biden Breaks 80% in Michigan, Trump Continues To Struggle, Biden’s Successful Presidency Is Leaving Rs With Nothing To Run On, Moving On From The Trump Trials, “All of us have a role to play”

Biden’s Chances Are Much Stronger Than People Realize (MSNBC), 4 Things Biden Should Do Now (New Republic)

Hopium Analysis/Them - More Performance Problems For Trump and MAGA in South Carolina, Trump Is Not Strong, Or Winning - No Red Waving 2024 Please, Coming To Terms With Russia’s Penetration of Trump and The GOP, MAGA Descends Into Madness

Hopium Events/Appearances - Our Monthly Hopium Gathering With Special Guest Tom Suozzi, With Democrats, Things Get Better

Appearances - PoliticsGirl, MeidasTouch, Daily Kos’ The Brief and The Ezra Klein Show

The Most Powerful Democratic Political Machine We’ve Ever Seen - Read my recent post on the powerful political machine we building together, and let’s just keep staring at this jaw-dropping data from the Suozzi campaign:

In the space of five weeks people knocked on over 150,000 doors, made over 2 million phone calls, and wrote hundreds of thousands of postcards. Our campaign estimates that every Democrat household in the NY-03 received, on average, five handwritten postcards.

We Raise The Flag - Courage, Opportunity, Democracy, Freedom

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