Trump Begins The Rebrand. Are We Ready?
Today is Election Day in Miami - Let's bring it home for Eileen Higgins and end 2025 strong everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Morning all. I’m heading to Los Angeles for the DNC/State Chairs meetings in a few hours. Posts this week are likely to be shorter and less frequent but I will be reporting in. Excited to be getting together with friends from across the country, particularly after what has been such a successful year for us electorally.
Today Trump heads to Pennsylvania for the first stop in a new tour to rebrand him as a champion of affordability and working people. Let’s be clear that Trump, facing terrible poll numbers for his terrible first year, isn’t changing policy course - he’s just going to launch a year long campaign backed by tremendous amounts of money - some ill-gotten - to memory hole this first year and bullshit the public.
Democrats must take this new effort seriously, and develop a comprehensive strategy to keep the hard negatives of his “more for me, less for you” tenure front and center for voters, particularly low political information voters. Part of the big lesson from 2023-2024 is that when we are not communicating about the harms and dangers of MAGA Trump can recover. Here is Real Clear Politics’s Trump job approval tracker with black approve, red disapprove. On Jan 20, 2023 Trump was 37.7%-56.8% (-19), similar to where he is now in many polls. On Election Day, 2024 he was 44.9%-51.9% (-7) - a gain of 12 points.
While there has been much discussion about how Trump is now, and may cheat next year, I think their central strategy to win the mid-terms and stay in power is through convention electoral politics. They just intend to spend far more money than us, and use these next few months when we are still in primaries and replenishing our coffers to restore his brand health through a massive oligarch funded campaign (and help from his global petro-allies too). That campaign launches today in Pennsylvania.
Two years ago, seeing the early stages of Trump’s recovery, I posted something on Twitter that got a lot of attention:
I am making the same recommendation now, today, December 9, 2025, to our family. The 2026 general election begins today, and we need to being moving to a general election tempo and footing now, not in the summer and fall of 2026. It’s why we put so much emphasis here at Hopium on early money, particularly with the battleground state parties. We started our campaign too late in 2024 and it cost us. We cannot make the same mistake this time. Politics doesn’t have seasons. It’s always on, 24/7/365, and we need to get going now. The 2026 general election begins today and we need to stay very, very focused on the mission - beating Trump and MAGA, and not fighting with one another.
We’ve had a some terrific conversations and presentations here these last few weeks. In case you missed them be sure to check out:
Dr. Rob Shapiro on how Trump has made affordability worse; Stuart Stevens on Trump putting Putin first; Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat on understanding how strongmen like Trump work
Eileen Higgins who is running to flip the city of Miami blue for the first time since the 1990s
My latest big picture video and written analysis, Trump Is Failing, The Regime Is Cracking, And Democrats Have To Keep Fighting Hard
Reports from the U.S. House from Ranking Members Robert Garcia and Hopium regular Adam Smith
And please take the time to meet and get to know our four intrepid candidates in our Winning The House series. They are great!
Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Janelle Stelson ( PA-10)
For those wanting more on the NSS and Trump’s selling out of Ukraine and Europe to Putin watch our recent interviews with Rep. Adam Smith and Stuart Stevens, and read my essays Coming To A Better Understanding Of Trumpism and Surrender, Not War.
My next report will be from Los Angeles……
Now, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Closing Strong In 2025
Eileen Higgins For Mayor Of Miami (today) - $27,500 raised, $25,000 goal | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my our conversation with Eileen Higgins (the period for donating has ended, up to the campaign and volunteers now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $57k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $102k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff
Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $34,000 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)
Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps (2026-2032)
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $219,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas | Donate to all five state parties in a single contribution | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties!
In a new essay I talk about how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up now, be loud now, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land. The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.
Defending America, Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Making Hopium Stronger - We have two recommended actions today:
1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:
Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender
Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law
Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world
Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties by blocking the expansion of ICE; restoring due process for immigrants across the country; vigorously defending the 1st Amendment; warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents; ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress, end the rancid cover up, and release all of the Epstein files
Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA and Medicaid; support and co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens’ effort to Impeach and remove Robert Kennedy
2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - Next year, on July 4th, America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his.
One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next year.
Still drawing inspiration from this passage from FDR’s Four Freedoms speech:
In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion - or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.
I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.
Finally, please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder!
Keep working hard all, and remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We do not hope tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We do the work to make it so - Simon
I read that SCOTUS will hear a case about money in elections today. It caused me to think basically what Simon said in this newsletter—that they plan to lean into the conventional electoral process but overwhelm us with a flood of money.
I don’t think of it as rebranding. I think of it as a new set of lies. Voters bought the lies once, will they do it again??