VP Harris Is Bringing Joy, Optimism and Love Of Country To The National Mall Tonight - And A Necessary Warning About MAGA's Ongoing Threat
Friends, we are winning this election, but have not won it - yet!!!!!!! Need to keep working hard and closing strong in these final 7 days....
Happy Tuesday all. 7 days of hard work left until victory. I ask three things of all of you today:
Make sure you have voted. Voting early helps our campaigns move on to lower propensity voters earlier, helps us grow our vote, and helps us win. Please vote early today if you have not yet. It’s really important.
Volunteer for the Harris-Walz campaign. Here’s the official volunteer link. We need to leave it all out there on the playing field in these final 7 days and go win this thing, together.
If you are in the DC area come to the Vice President’s closing argument speech tonight on the National Mall. Register here. I’ll be going with Tom Bonier tonight and am fired up, ready to go! If you cannot come, please watch and encourage others to join you. I assume MSNBC will go live, but you can also watch on the campaign’s YouTube channel where you can watch all their rallies live. Due to the speech we are no longer having a phonebank tonight. I hope to get it rescheduled, soon.
Let’s start today with a link to the campaign’s rally last night in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Both the VP and Governor Walz were there, and there is no better way to start your day then by spending a few minutes with these raucous, joyful rallies!
The attack on Puerto Rico in Trump’s Sunday hatefest has become a huge problem for Republicans and not just with Puerto Rican voters in the battleground states. It’s creating incredible levels of negative chatter about the Rs in the final week in Spanish language media throughout the country, reaching all Spanish speaking voters at this critical moment. It is also a reminder that while it was always possible for a Republican to break through with Latino voters it was never likely that the the guy to do it would be a virulent racist, xenophobe, bigot, rapist, serial criminal and a traitor.
To get a sense of what is being said and heard listen to these remarks from Sunny Hostin from The View yesterday. They are incredible.
After the speech tonight it is all about barnstorming the battlegrounds, closing strong and winning this thing, together. Here’s where the VP is headed, so far:
On Wednesday - Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin
On Thursday - Nevada and Arizona
We can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The 2024 Election - We Are Winning The Election But Have Not Won It Yet - Here’s my rough calculation of national polls released since Monday, October 14th broken down by independent polls and those affiliated with right-wing and Republican organizations.
Independent Polls Harris +2.5
538 Natl Average Harris +1.5
Right-Aligned Polls Trump +0.9 (3.4 points more Trump than independent polls)
Here are the independent polls we’ve received since Sunday:
Harris 51%-47% (+4) ABC/Ipsos
Harris 51%- 47% (+4) CCES/YouGov
Harris 50%-46% (+4) Clarity Labs
Harris 50%-47% (+3) Morning Consult
Harris 50%-49% (+1) CBS/You Gov
We got two new polls in Michigan this morning:
Harris 52%-47% (+5) Susquehanna
Harris 47%-44% (+3) Detroit News/Glengariff (DNews is a right-leaning paper)
We got two new polls in North Carolina too:
Harris 47%-47% (tied) WRAL/Survey USA
Harris 46%-46% (tied) Elon University
Here is how this WRAL final NC poll performed in recent elections. The Democratic candidate overperformed this final poll in 2 of the past 3 elections, including with Trump in 2016:
2020 TIED 48/48 (Trump 50/49)
2016 Trump 51/44 (Trump 50/46)
2012 Romney 50/45 (Romney 50/48)
One of the greatest myths in American politics today is that Trump overperforms polling. He did in 2020, a COVID election, but did not in 2016 (the election changed and the polls were actually very accurate) and did not in the 2024 Republican primaries. To be very clear - the statement “Trump always overperforms his polls” is false, right-wing bullshit, and has not been happening in this election, the only one that matters. In this election, like almost all elections since Dobbs, Trump and Republicans have been consistently underperforming public polls. We’ve been the ones overperforming.
Here is today’s Washington Post more highly curated battleground state polling averages. While it is close, we win this election. This data is very close to CBS’s current projections which also have Harris winning the Electoral College.
Where is the election today? I still think we are up by 2-4 points and in a stronger position in the Electoral College - despite what the averages and forecasters say. The VP is far better liked, and likeable, something that matters late breaking voters. We’ve closed the gap on the economy with Trump - a huge campaign achievement. A flurry of red wave polls pushed the polling averages down in the past few weeks and tipped them to Trump - illegitimately in my view. Since late August 31 right-affiliated organizations have released more than 85 polls into the averages. Read more about this illicit effort in this recent New Republic article and catch Trump admitting that some of these red wave polls showing him ahead are fraudulent.
And our daily reminder:
Rs would only be working so hard to shape the national narrative to make it look like Trump is winning if they believed he wasn’t. These red wave polls are a sign of desperation, weakness and campaign that knows it is losing.
Heading into the final week we should be pleased with what we are seeing in the early vote. Using TargetEarly we know Dems are running 7 points better in the 7 battleground states than the national early vote. Despite a much more much intense Republican effort this time Dems are now running even with the Rs in these 7 battleground states. This overperformance of the national vote in the battlegrounds is similar to what we saw in 2022 and is a sign of the strength and superiority of our ground game and our ability to create “two elections.” We are running ahead of our 2020 early vote results in GA, MI, NE-2 and WI. While Rs got off to a strong start in the sunbelt, we are closing the gap vs. 2020 in AZ, GA, NC, NV - another sign of our organizational strength. In PA it is clear that many have chosen to skip the mail-only system and vote on Election Day so the early vote data isn’t all that helpful there this year. We are doing fine so far, but PA is going to be an Election Day state, like the old days.
Taking a step back, right now Dems are matching our 2020 results in the battlegrounds despite the battleground electorate being older, whiter and more rural than at this point in 2020. Additionally, we are starting to see large Harris leads in polls of those who have voted early. It was 29 points in the NYT poll last week. So we are up by almost 30 points in an electorate that is 7 points more Republican than the electorate at this time in 2020. It’s all very encouraging for us, and suggests there has been a meaningful surge of Republicans and independents voting for Harris in the early vote so far.
Republicans are not winning or ahead in the early vote in the battlegrounds. We are ahead of 2020 in 4 states, catching up in 3 and competitive in PA. It’s trench warfare out there in the early vote my friends. We just have to keep working hard, keep closing strong and keep making this election bluer each day.
The NYT ran an important story about the Harris campaign this morning, Harris Aides Quietly Grow More Bullish About Beating Trump, that echoes themes and analysis from my last 2 days of posts (here, here). Some excerpts:
While still cautious, advisers and allies believe that casting Donald Trump as a fascist is working, and that their expansive ground game and appeals on abortion rights may carry the day….
…..As the presidential contest enters the final sprint, campaign aides and allies close to Vice President Kamala Harris are growing cautiously optimistic about her chances of victory, saying the race is shifting in her favor.
Top Democratic strategists are increasingly hopeful that the campaign’s attempts to cast former President Donald J. Trump as a fascist — paired with an expansive battleground-state operation and strength among female voters still energized by the end of federal abortion rights — will carry Ms. Harris to a narrow triumph. Even some close to Mr. Trump worry that the push to label him a budding dictator who has praised Hitler could move small but potentially meaningful numbers of persuadable voters…..
…..The tempered sense of Democratic confidence follows a period of high anxiety in the party as polls tightened in recent weeks. But now Ms. Harris and other party leaders have begun to discard their winking warnings that she is the underdog.
“Make no mistake: We will win,” she said at a rally on Sunday in Philadelphia. “We will win because if you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for.”
…..Democrats are closing with a trifecta of messages that have been the foundation of Ms. Harris’s snap campaign: support for abortion rights, promises to improve the economy by lowering costs and housing prices, and warnings that Mr. Trump is a dangerous authoritarian. But she has largely refused to separate herself from the Biden administration, which remains broadly unpopular.
On Tuesday in Washington, she will deliver what aides are billing as a closing argument at the Ellipse, where Mr. Trump rallied the crowd that eventually stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The most powerful force in our politics since 2018 has been fear and opposition to MAGA, and it sure looks like it will be again,” said Simon Rosenberg, a strategist who was one of a handful of Democrats who correctly predicted the party’s overperformance in the 2022 midterms. “What is likely to happen in this election is that Trump will end up underperforming his polls.”
“Make no mistake: We will win.”
More 2024 election analysis:
Watch my Thursday night appearance on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show. Alex, Dan Pfeiffer and I had a great discussion about the election - polling, the early vote, and the big story that just broke about Elon Musk’s illicit and dangerous relationship with Vladimir Putin.
My new video presentation and Hopium post on the election. The video and post are a very comprehensive deep dive on where things stand and are well worth your time.
Our new Closing Strong episode with Nevada Senator Cortez Masto talking about why she thinks we will win there despite the early noise, a really interesting look at the third party vote (or lack thereof), and Tara and I do our regular roundup of the week’s electoral developments. Strongly recommend for those who want to go deeper into the Nevada early vote.
Doing More And Worrying Less/Working Hard And Closing Strong In The Home Stretch - 7 days of voting left everyone - let’s keep working it!
My one big ask today - donate to and volunteer for Harris-Walz. Beating the fascists remains job 1 today and every day until victory.
I want to thank all of you who are self-reporting on all your remarkable work across the country. Postcards, canvassing, back yard phonebank parties - you all are doing the work we need to do to win. For when the Hopium community is called - you answer! Thank you all.
Some have asked - are donations this late useful? Yes they are. My advice is that whatever you are going to give this year give it this weekend. The earlier they get the money the more useful it is to the campaign. Late money goes directly into augmenting paid advertising and reaching more voters. So yes it matters. Let’s keep working it people!
Harris-Walz, Our Presidential Checkmate States and Wisconsin - Learn more about our “checkmate” strategy, and support Ruben Gallego and these three front-line state parties:
Harris-Walz, The Mothership - $1,359,000 raised, $1,500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | Subscribe to The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel and watch her inspiring rallies live
North Carolina - $1,005,000 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton
Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $607,000 raised, $700,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego
Wisconsin Dem Party - $114,000 raised, $200,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Watch Our Recent Closing Strong Interview with the great Ben Wikler
Nebraska/Blue Dot - $311,000 raised, $300,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb.
Winning The House - Keeping getting very good vibes from our candidates and House Democratic leadership about flipping the House this year. We need to keep working it peeps!
Support All 15 Hopium-Backed Candidates With A Single Donation - $1,791,000 raised, $1,750,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer, Learn More and Watch Interviews With Our Candidates (for our higher net worth donors note that you can give up to $49,500 split 15 ways for this group). You can donate to any one of our 15 candidates directly here.
Keeping The Senate Blue - this is a brawl my friends, and we just have to keep working it:
Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $607,000 raised, $700,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Montana/Jon Tester - $178,000 raised, $200,000 goal (new stretch goal!) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Ohio/Sherrod Brown - $123,000 raised, $100,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Wisconsin Dem Party/Tammy Baldwin - $114,000 raised, $200,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Nebraska/Blue Dot - $311,000 raised, $300,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More
Growing The Hopium Community - We’ve set some goals for the growth of our community so more of us can be doing more and worrying less in the home stretch:
Hopium Subscribers - 116,100 this morning, 125,000 goal
Paid Subscribers - 13,520 this morning, 14,000 goal
Great work everyone. We are making real progress here. Hopium paid subscribers get access to a weekly live home stretch political briefing and Founding Members will have their own small gathering on Fridays. You can become a paid subscriber and help us hit our goals by clicking on the link below or following this link. The subscription tab includes options for gift and group subscriptions, all 10% off through Election Day!
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you.
Let’s bring it home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Simon
Apropos future elections, here is a choice sentence from humor columnist Alexandra Petri’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, after Jeff Bezos blocked The Washington Post from endorsing her:
"I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them."
– Alexandra Petri
(More than 200,000 people have cancelled their digital subscription after Bezos forced The Post to violate Timothy Snyder’s first rule of fighting tyranny: "Do not obey in advance.")
Guys, just remember: if politicial experts like Simon, Jen O‘Malley Dillon, James Carville and David Plouffe (all with decades of experience and first hand knowledge) feel cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the election, so can we. We just to have leave it all on the field in the next couple of days and then we will win this thing.