The President Is Clearly Fighting For Us. Now We Need To Go Fight For Him

The President Leads in 4 New Polls, Another Strong Jobs Report - Let's Go Win This Thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Friday all. We had a great night last night. A President of these great United States said things we all needed to hear. What we saw was a fierce defender of our freedoms, a spirited champion of every day people, a determined warrior for progress and possibilities. I rise this morning proud of my President, proud of my party, and very very proud of my country.

If you haven’t yet, watch the speech. Read the transcript. Study it, come to understand it all. It is the argument we are going to be taking to the American people this year. And it is a great argument, about a powerful nation, a remarkably good and resilient people, desperate to move beyond this dangerous moment and to find a better path forward here and around the world.
We can win the election with this argument. It is time to get going now and win this thing, together.

Last night the President made very clear that he is fighting for us. Now it is time for all of us to fight for him. If you haven’t yet, please join his campaign by making a contribution of any amount - $5, $10, more. If you have already given, give a bit more. If you want do more I offer other ways to advance our politics below as here at Hopium we do more, worry less, and just win elections, again and again, together.

Even before this powerful speech, the President has had his best week of polling in some time. Four new, national polls show him leading. He has made meaningful gains in all of them, and all of them had more interviews than the the NYT poll from last week (you can find the polls at 538):

• 47-44 Kaiser Family Foundation (7 pt Biden gain since last poll)

• 51-49 Emerson (3 pt Biden gain since last poll)

• 44-43 Morning Consult (5 pt Biden gain over past month)

• 43-42 TIPP (3 pt Biden gain since last poll)

Many have heard me say that what I thought would happen this spring was that when it became clear it was Biden vs Trump a big chunk of our wandering coalition would come home, and Biden would gain 3-4 points and open up a small but meaningful lead in national polling. It’s possible that is what we are seeing now. It is what Morning Consult found in their polling this week:

Biden retakes lead from Trump: Biden leads Trump, the likeliest Republican presidential nominee for 2024, by 1 percentage point (44% to 43%) in our latest national tracking survey. It’s Biden’s first lead over Trump since early January, and is driven by coalescence among the voters who backed him last time around: 85% of Biden 2020 voters say they’d vote for him if the election were today, the largest share since early September.

We also got another encouraging jobs report this morning - 275,000 new jobs. It’s a reminder of just how strong the economic recovery has been under Biden:

• Best job market since the 1960s, best COVID recovery in the G7, stock market setting records, consumer sentiment is rising, lowest uninsured rate in American history

• Historically elevated wage gains, new business formation and prime-age worker participation levels

• Inflation has come way down, is lower here than any other advanced nation, prices for many items now falling. The inflation spike we experienced in early 2022 due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and OPEC’s repeated prices increases is long behind us

See this post for why I think Americans are much more upbeat about the economy than is the conventional wisdom right now, and why I think we can turn the economy into a winning issue for us this year.

The core arguments Republicans make against Biden furthered evaporated last night. The economy is strong not weak. Inflation is down not rising. Crime and murder rates are plummeting not raging. All forms of domestic energy production are setting records and we are more energy independent today than in decades - there is no war on energy. Democrats are trying to bring order to the border, Republicans want to keep it chaotic. The “Biden crime family” narrative turns out to be a Russian operation laundered by traitorous Republicans. And now we saw a President strong, vigorous, powerful not old and frail. They have nothing. They have no argument. There is no reason to elect them. All that is left for them now is the madness of the orange man, more degraded, extreme and dangerous, a serial criminal and betrayer of the country, an historic embarrassment for America, and for the once proud party of Lincoln and Reagan.

Biden-Harris Co-Chair Mitch Landrieu summed it up best this morning:

If you had eyes and ears, you saw a president that was tough, that was smart, that was ready for the fight, that took it to people and talked about the American people. For two weeks before that, every pundit in America was putting Joe Biden in the grave, as if 81 was the most important number. The president said, it's not my numerical age but the youth of my ideas. He brought the heat, and he did an unbelievable job last night.

What I would like to ask everybody in America is, can we finally put to rest whether Joe Biden is up to the task of governing this country? Listen, as a mayor, I can tell you, there is no congressman, no governor, no CEO in America who can stand up and do what Joe Biden did last night. It's hard. It requires concentration. I think he also demonstrated to people that we have an existential threat, and we have a choice to make in this country. the choice is really clear. you can choose Donald Trump, who every time his lips are moving, he's lying and he's delusional, he is hoping America has amnesia about how dark and backward-looking he is and how narrow his view is, taking away people's rights. Or, vote for a president who delivers, has promised that as a future-looking person, he is optimistic and expanding people's rights in America, and he'll fight for everyday Americans opposed to the richest folks in the country. He couldn't have made it clearer, couldn't have done it better, and I thought he hit it out of the park last night.

The President of the United States is fighting for us. Now we need to go fight for him, and our country, and our future, together.

Watch this new video from Biden world. It’s inspiring and powerful - the words and images of a strong party, a compelling leader and winning campaign:

The Biden-Harris General Election Campaign Has Begun - From Michael Scherer in the Washington Post - “Biden’s campaign aims to seize March for campaign push”

The campaign now says Biden’s State of the Union appearance in front of Congress on Thursday will mark the beginning of the end of the waiting game. The Biden campaign and broader network of supporting groups are poised to turn on their machine over the coming months, while Trump pivots to the general election. The mission: to demonstrate Biden’s momentum and tamp down party anxiety before the August convention in Chicago.

New swing-state advertising from the campaign and outside groups is expected in the coming weeks and months. State leadership teams in the eight battleground states, including newly added New Hampshire, have been ordered to begin engaging with volunteers and contacting voters through what the campaign has started to call a “March month of action.” Offices will open. Coalition groups will launch. Members of Congress will be dispatched. Administration travel, including by Biden, will be robust, according to people involved in the planning.

“We leave this quarter with an operation built to scale so that we can dial up aggressive communications programs across all of those paths to victory,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director. “There will be a lot of voter conversations and volunteer conversations.”

A team of senior Biden advisers, including campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and co-chair Mitch Landrieu, briefed members of Congress on the plan last month during a Democratic caucus retreat. One of their messages was a plan to “lean heavily into voter and volunteer engagement for March, which the campaign sees as a key moment for engagement and mobilization,” according to a Biden campaign briefing document. Members of Congress were asked to chip in with swing-state office openings, yard sign distribution and volunteer recruitment drives.

The push comes as the Biden campaign — long criticized for its deliberate pace — finds itself with an enormous financial and organizational advantage over Trump, who is expected to lock down the Republican nomination later this month. The Biden campaign staged a similarly more aggressive push at several points last year as well, launching advertising in August and then more directly attacking Trump later in the year.

The Post story goes on to detail the actions various groups are taking, and ends this way (way to go everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!):

Democrats also enjoy a still vibrant network of grass-roots groups around the country, which have remained engaged since 2018 and are largely able to coordinate with the Biden campaign. Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, spoke last week to Swing Left, a network of volunteers. She invited people to join the campaign’s “I’m On Board” organizing effort.

“As we jump into March, as we come out of Super Tuesday and the president’s State of the Union in the next couple of weeks, it will be a real opportunity to just remind voters of just what that choice, how important and how critical this election is, and really what everyone can do to get on board,” Rodriguez told the group on Feb. 29.

While Biden has lacked the movement-like charisma of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, Democrats continue to enjoy significant state and local organizing muscle, largely through loose national networks of local progressive groups. The campaign of Rep. Tom Suozzi, who recently outperformed polling by about eight points in a special election on New York’s Long Island, credits these groups with giving him a huge advantage, as have other campaigns in special elections in recent years.

Suozzi’s campaign team said about a third of the door-knocking, letter-writing and phone-calling that took place in that race came from groups outside the district, such as the Massachusetts-based Swing Blue Alliance. Democrats widely believe that the opposition to Trump will solidify, powering volunteer efforts despite the misgivings about Biden’s candidacy.

“In the past few years, fear of MAGA has helped fuel the building of the most powerful grassroots machine the Democratic Party has ever had,” Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who now works with local activist groups, said in a statement. “Their money and hard work will ensure the Biden campaign is the biggest and strongest Presidential campaign Democrats have ever run.”

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 you do today, right now:

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 $120,000 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 $87,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Help Ruben Gallego Win Arizona - Yesterday I endorsed Ruben Gallego in his race to become the next Senator in Arizona. The polls are encouraging there, and this is a very critical 2024 battleground state - must win Biden-Harris state, must win Senate, two House pick up opportunities (and maybe the state house too). Because Senator Sinema stayed in for so long, Ruben is a bit behind where he should be financially and organizationally, and needs our help today. Please donate today, and I will be posting some volunteer opportunities in the coming days. We have already over $31,000 for Ruben - thank you all!

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.

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you. We are going to win this thing, together - Simon