There Are Good Days, And There Are Bad Days, Everyone
Let's focus on making tomorrow a better day.......
Morning all. Today is one of those not good days…..
The US Men’s Team - As inspiring as our team was in our first four matches last night was a bit of a horror show. We played terribly, and didn’t look any thing like the team that roared into the final 16. With Trump’s illicit intervention in our player’s suspension our team has somehow gone in the last few days from one that was lifting up a nation to something ugly.
Will Trump be blamed for somehow wrecking the incredible trajectory the team was on? We will be debating that for generations, but my initial take is that Trump really f-cked up here; and because he is old, addled, vainglorious, impulsive, and rapacious he just couldn’t help himself. He inserted/forced himself into something that he never, ever should have touched, and he has been terribly, terribly burned. He has done even more damage to our global reputation and his, and this time right on the eve of a hugely important NATO summit….
Platner - Here is the statement the Maine Democratic Party put out last night:
My assumption is that Platner will withdraw in the next few days and give the Maine Democratic Party a chance to select a new candidate in the coming weeks. But as we saw with Harris in the summer of 2024 replacing a candidate in a situation like this is hard, and our success - despite soaring unpopularity of the GOP brand in Maine, a state Harris won by 7 points in 2024 - is not guaranteed. The good news is that the NYT poll last week our Gubernatorial candidate Hannah Pingree leads by double digits and the generic ballot favors us right now by 11 points - so we will have a shot with a new candidate, but it will be hard.
We will have time to debate and discuss what happened with Platner but a few initial observations this morning…..
1 - The escalating demonization of the Democratic Party and “Establishment Democrats” has become a reckless and destructive project. As I wrote in this piece
the percentage of Democrats who are angry at their party or party leadership is a small minority - organized, loud, and very on-line - but a minority. Look at the difference in performance right now in the Senate battlegrounds between the “Establishment Party” and the Platner industrial complex:
In polling from the last week the two candidates performing the worst relative to 2024 are Platner and El-Sayed. “The Establishment Democrats” are outperforming 2024 by double digits throughout the battleground, something that is, simply, a remarkable achievement, a rousing demonstration of our party’s strength; and one that should be universally celebrated throughout the family right now.
Here is that Gallup data showing Party ID - a measure of the health of the Democratic brand - at one of its highest points in the last 35 years.
2 - Which brings me to the Michigan Senate race. The ferocity of the on-line attacks on Rep. Haley Stevens is reminiscent of the discourse we saw around Platner over the past year. While we have not taken a position in the Senate race I consider Rep. Stevens a friend. She is a warrior for working people and a deeply admirable public servant, who among other things, helped lead the auto bailout under Obama which helped save the auto industry in Michigan. Oppose her, be for your guy, but the demonization of someone like Haley Stevens has no place in our family. We don’t need a return of the noxious Bernie Bros as a staple in our discourse.
This stuff is also bad politics, as El-Sayed will need those Stevens supports and lots and lots “Establishment Democrats” to beat Mike Rogers in November if he prevail in the primary. Attacking the Democratic Party and our Congressional leadership may be effective in a Democratic Primary where is no general election but this Bernie-descended politics has not proven to be successful in general elections that require a robust Democratic vote in a competitive race against Republicans.
It may work this year in Michigan but we simply must acknowledge there are reasons this politics has been largely limited to deep blue parts of the country.
3 - As I wrote the other day contrary to much of what we’ve been told character and virtue actually matters in our politics, and they have become huge assets for us in key battleground races across the country as we attempt to create a clear contrast with the immoral and corrupt party of Trump.
4 - As I’ve repeatedly said I welcome the debate we are having right now about our future as a pro-democracy movement and as a Party, and will keep attempting every day to inform and not inflame. In that regard, I share an article originally shared by Hopium community member Lillian Taiz which provides important context about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), written by an active DSA member. I found it helpful and think you will too:
Yes, my friends, today is a hard day……but we must dust ourselves off, keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can…….
For We Have Elections To Win This November!!!!!!
Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map
(Please be patient as we overhaul and update this section. Note that we have now changed our ActBlue default settings so that your contact information is only shared with a campaign if you give your affirmative permission. Many of you have asked for this and it is now our standard operating procedure. )
Winning The House
Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign - $952,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate to all twelve of our endorsed House challengers with a single contribution split twelve ways | Get to know Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03) by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.
Friends if these twelve win, the House will flip, no matter redistricting madness the Rs execute in the coming days. So eyes on the prize here everyone!
Winning The House - The Second Wave Fund - $168,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | We’ve launched a second House fund, one targeting candidates who’ve recently emerged from primaries or running in new districts. Our initial crew is Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), Bob Brooks (PA-07), Cait Conley (NY-17), Johnny Garcia (TX-35), Bob Harvie (PA-01), Denise Powell (NE-02), and Bobby Pulido (TX-15).
A donation to the Second Wave Fund is split evenly among these seven, and more as other worthy candidates emerge from their primaries. Our total above includes money we’ve raised for directly for each candidate. You can watch interviews with all of seven of these intrepid leaders here. We are off to a great start here everyone!
Winning The Senate/Expanding The Map - Investing And Winning In Key Expansion States
Our New Winning The Senate Fund - $463,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | This new fund splits a single donation to our five candidates must likely to flip a Senate seat this November - Sherrod Brown (OH), Roy Cooper (NC), Mary Peltola (AK), James Talarico (TX), and Josh Turek (IA). The $459,000 figure is what we’ve raised for these six so far, as you see will below.
Graham Platner has been removed from our recommended list given the new revelations today and his statement that he was reviewing whether his campaign could continue.
You can also contribute to their individual campaigns or our expansion state bundles here:
Roy Cooper For NC Senate - $129,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my new discussion with Gov. Cooper
Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $114,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my uplifting conversation with Mary Peltola as she fights to turn Alaska blue
James Talarico For Texas - $101,500 raised, $250,000 - Donate | Learn more from my inspiring interview with Rep. Talarico as he fights to turn Texas blue
Josh Turek For Iowa Senate - $30,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more and volunteer | Watch my wonderful new interview with Josh Turek
Winning Iowa - $14,900 raised, $100,000 goal - We’ve also set up a new Winning Iowa campaign that splits a contribution three ways - to Josh Turek for Senate, to our gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, and to the Iowa Democratic Party and its great chair, Rita Hart
Winning Ohio - $171,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party | Donate today and help turn this critical 2026 battleground blue
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $620,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our campaign that has helped expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas, all now central battlegrounds in the 2026 election | Contribute to all five state parties with one contribution split evenly among these five critical battlegrounds | Catch interviews with the five intrepid state chairs leading their troops into battle this year - will get you fired up!
Senate Holds
Jon Ossoff For GA Senate - $201,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my uplifting conversation with Senator Ossoff
Some Things To Call Congress About This Week
Yes to making American oligarchs pay for Trump’s failed Iran war - not every day Americans
Yes to the Ukraine Support Act, get it passed through the Senate and to the President’s desk
No to the ballroom, the Arch, the gilded statues, the slush fund, the corruption, self-enrichment……
Hell no to Todd Blanche as Attorney General, and yes to very tough questioning of the new DNI nominee, Jay Clayton
Hell hell no to the new OMB regs that will destroy government-funded science in America. Join the new Stand Up For Science campaign to Stop Vought. Save Science today.
See the Hopium Agenda Project for what we can and should be fighting for now, and our Resolutions Project for ways to more forcefully condemn Trump’s unprecedented corruption and betrayal of the country.
Make Hopium Stronger, Bigger, Better - And Keep It Paywall Free For All
A big thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber in recent days. Our Independence day subscription drive and sale netted us 282 new subscribes - a little short of our goal, but progress nonetheless. To help us hit our goal of 500 new subscribers I’m extending the sale of an annual new subscription through August 1st. So it’s 10% off an annual subscription now through the end of July, and follow the link below for group and gift subscriptions too!
Please use the paid subscriber chat to self-report the good trouble you make each day.
Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections all across this great country to win, together! - Simon
You know I’m just gonna admit it… I got sucked into the excitement around Platner. He was a very compelling speaker, and I loved his populist agenda. I was never comfortable with the degree to which he was running against the Democratic Party itself… I think an awfully good metric going forward is that if someone is running against the party instead of against the person or people in their primary field, there could be trouble afoot. I’m sure some of them have good intentions under it all, but this is a situation ripe for opportunistic grifters who want to take advantage of an impassioned voter base.
I have tried, not just for myself, but for my family and my circle of friends and influence to be the keeper of the Democratic Party’s overall story, which much like America as a whole, has blind spots, disgrace, and to put it the most positively, insufficiencies. But it is also a political project that mirrors the best of what America has always been. It has evolved… It has tried to meet the moment. The Democratic Party is a place where bold, and flawed leaders have taken a stand at a moment when the United States needed it most to change for the better… Certainly under pressure, because the party is nothing but an organization that responds to people.
But the history of our party is one where we had an important lock on electoral votes in the south as well as big congressional majorities that were stable in both chambers save maybe four or six years total in just the Senate between 1955 and 1995… and yet, Lyndon Johnson, a man who came from the Jim Crow south, at the moment when it was actually possible and when history was on the line, used all of his political leverage and pushed through the civil rights act and the voting rights act. And he knew when he did it that he would be unraveling our supremacy in the south for at least a couple of generations. And we have paid a very heavy political price for that decision and yet, nothing makes me more proud to be a Democrat than knowing that that’s part of our history.
Because history called and we did the right fucking thing. And you contrast that with what the Republicans did. Standing on top of the legacy that was established by who is generally considered our nation‘s greatest president, and who will forever be known as the man who saved the union and emancipated the slaves… And what did they do in the exact same moment? They decided that they would go after the disaffected white supremacists and build a voting coalition around them so that they could grab power. Instead of helping us bake into the culture permanently that white supremacy is un-American and will never be tolerated again, they hopped in bed with the same motherfuckers that had been controlling our apparatus for too long, and then with massive funding from the wealthiest oligarchy to ever roam planet Earth, they commenced on a 60 year project to wage the most divisive, ugly, cynical politics on the American people that we have seen since the Civil War. They have pitted neighbor against neighbor, they have done everything they can to control as much of the discourse as possible through media consolidation so that they can convince Americans that “some“ of us aren’t American enough, aren’t patriotic enough, aren’t moral enough, aren’t strong enough, and don’t look right.
I don’t know how you could possibly betray the two central projects of Abraham Lincoln‘s presidency and the mark that he left on history more than to try to keep white supremacy permanently embroiled in our culture as the social expectation, and then to use that to divide America as much as possible. For Christ’s sake, it’s a betrayal of all of us, but I can’t even believe what a staggering betrayal of their foundational leader it is.
I could write a 50 page essay right now on all the things starting with the new deal and moving into the present day that make me proud to be a Democrat, and where the Democratic Party, even when they fell short of everything that I hoped for, was the one trying to meet the moment and make this a better country. And I have reams of evidence of how the country is in fact better because the Democratic Party was governing.
It’s been a very difficult decade, and the decade that we’ve lived through is a culmination of six decades worth of bullshit propaganda, and a relentless assault on our national comity and shared national community… And it’s been very deliberate. We have had some bad apples, but we have been a good political party. And as the American people have changed, we have changed. Especially in this moment, for all of our perceived flaws and faults, I’ve fucking had it… We are not the party the people should be running against. Especially people who want to appear next to our brand on a ballot.
I love the fresh blood coming in and I think there is room for aggressive populism in our ranks, but run against your opponents in the primary and pledge to make the Democratic Caucus better, don’t run against the party itself, as if we’ve done nothing but fuck things up… Because it is not true… Not even a little. We should all be proud of our collective accomplishments and that does not take away our right and obligation to be disappointed in what yet remains to be done and the times when we weren’t strong enough to stop something bad from happening. This is my team, and I’m fucking proud of it. 🇺🇸
Thank you Simon - I’ve supported Hopium since the beginning and have never failed to learn about American politics from you. When Platner first appeared I was really hopeful that a candidate had been found who would be effective against Sen Collins. I am so disappointed for all of you that he is not that man. What I must say is that I could not quite understand your reticence at the start of his campaign, now I know why, your instincts were right and you were right to counsel caution. Even though I’m on the other side of the pond it is impossible not to recognise the anxiety about the looming midterms and passions are running high. I sincerely hope that you can persuade your band of proud plucky patriots that their passion needs to be directed towards defeating the republicans and not fracturing the ever growing democratic coalition that you are helping to build. Wishing you and all at the Hopium community well.