We Cannot Look Away From What the GOP Has Become

We have events tomorrow and Tuesday next week - RSVP today

Friends,

It’s been quite a week, quite a summer. Joe Biden has strengthened his case for re-election, while Republicans have strengthened their case for being arguably the worst group of people to ever try to lead our country.

Two Upcoming Events:

• Friday, August 18th, 1pm EST - With Democrats Things Get Better - Learn more about With Dems and RSVP here. It is new and fresh with each showing so you will always find something new. This is my signature presentation and well worth 30 minutes sometime in the next few weeks.

• Tuesday, August 22nd 7pm EST - Our monthly Hopium Chronicles political briefing and discussion - This monthly get-together is for the whole Hopium community. I start it off with a 15-minute overview of the national political landscape and then open it up for discussion. RSVP here. Feel free to invite friends so they can learn more about the great community we are building here at Hopium Chronicles. So much to talk about next week!

Our Late Summer Paid Subscriber Drive Is Off To a Great Start - Thanks to everyone who has become a paid subscriber and a big thanks to those working to sign folks up. You can learn more about our summer drive here. Our 10% discount on annual membership runs through Labor Day - upgrade today!

Terrific New Pod - Yesterday I joined Deep State Radio’s David Rothkopf and author and commentator Dahlia Lithwick for what was a really great discussion about the indictment of 19 Republicans in Georgia this week. Do listen - this was one of the best pods I’ve been part of in a while. A great 30 minutes for all of you who love podcasts.

The Truly Terrible, Historically Awful, Serially Treasonous Republican Party - Let’s do a quick review of what the GOP has been up to of late:

• A party-wide effort to overturn an American election, end American democracy, and install a fascist dictator in the heart of the modern global democracy movement

• Supporting an insurrectionist, stealer of America’s secrets, backer of autocrats and oligarchs, COVID denier, convicted sex offender for President despite it all

• Earlier this year House GOP attempted to throw the economy into a deep recession and financial collapse to hurt Biden. Not surprising, as the last 3 GOP Presidents saw recessions and rising deficits on their watch.

• Ending Roe, enacting barbaric abortion restrictions across the US, forcing seventh graders who’ve been raped to have their rapist’s baby

• Lionizing the deeply compromised Roberts Court, protecting unprecedented judicial corruption, inventing ridiculous new laws to advance their extremist agenda, complicity in stealing a Supreme Court seat, and now silence as Trump launches a rancid attack against the judiciary across the US

• Forging an alliance with the Saudis and Russians to undermine Biden, roll back clean energy investments, prop up petro-dictators

• Undermining our national COVID response, doing long term harm to other public health measures and causing hundreds of thousands of people to die unnecessarily

• Decades of gun extremism leaving America the most dangerous developed nation on Earth, and with us having far far too many dead kids

• Ferocious efforts at the state level to create laboratories of autocracy (h/t David Pepper) and new ways to establish permanent one-party control

• Banning books, closing libraries, degrading public education across the US

• Deployment of barbed wire on Rio Grande in clear violation of international law, and new threats to start a land war with Mexico, our neighbor and second largest trading partner

The list goes on and on. Seriously, WTF happened to the Republican Party? This is not about Trump. It’s about the dangerous decline of one of America’s two parties. It is why we are here. Why we do our work, and why we need to get to 55 next year and make 2024 a clear and historic repudiation of all this.

Can we do it? Read this passage from a new AP analysis:

After every new indictment, Donald Trump has boasted that his standing among Republicans only improves — and he has a point.

Nearly two-thirds of Republicans — 63 percent — now say they want the former president to run again, according to new polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up slightly from the 55 percent who said the same in April when Trump began facing a series of criminal charges. Seven in 10 Republicans now have a favorable opinion of Trump, an uptick from the 60 percent who said so two months ago.

But in a crucial warning sign for the former president and his supporters, Trump faces glaring vulnerabilities heading into a general election, with many Americans strongly dug in against him. While most Republicans — 74 percent — say they would support him in November 2024, 53 percent of Americans say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee. Another 11 percent say they would probably not support him in November 2024.

The findings bolster the arguments of some of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination who laud his tenure as president, but warn that he can’t win in a general election when he must compete for votes beyond the GOP base. Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 campaign, attaining the presidency only by winning a majority in the Electoral College. He lost to Democrat Joe Biden by an even larger 7 million-vote margin in 2020, a defeat he has falsely attributed to widespread voter fraud.

Some Republicans who are pushing the party to move past Trump argue his standing with the broader public has only deteriorated since the last presidential election, dragged down by his role in sparking the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and the constant turmoil that surrounds him, epitomized by his unprecedented legal woes.

“There is a meaningful number of voters who have voted for Trump twice and can’t vote for him again after all of this,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who has been running focus groups with GOP voters.

……….

Adding to Trump’s headwinds, the poll found that opposition to Biden’s reelection is not as deeply entrenched. The 80-year-old president, who faces only nominal rivals in a Democratic primary, faces skepticism among voters, particularly over his age. But just 43 percent of Americans say they would definitely not support him in a general election, with another 11 percent saying they probably wouldn’t.

Meanwhile, the charges in Georgia and Washington have turned Trump’s attention back to his grievances about the last election — something aides and allies have spent months urging Trump to limit focusing on at his events.

“53 percent of Americans say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee. Another 11 percent say they would probably not support him in November 2024.” This is get to 55 territory peeps.

One of the things we discuss in the new Deep State Radio pod (above) is how Democrats need to start using blunter, more direct and more forceful language to describe what Trump and the Republicans have become. Something like:

• Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off today. The Democratic Party is vibrant, united and strong. If re-elected, Biden will ensure America keeps making progress and freedom and democracy prevail.

• The Republicans, on the other hand, have repeatedly betrayed the country, are working to end American democracy, strip our freedoms from us, and wreck the economic recovery underway. Electing them will bring ruin to America, deep and terrible decline.

I’ve come to believe that the very best thing for our democracy is for Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination, face his trials as the Republican nominee, and get routed next year. Enough is enough. If we get to 55, together, we will be taking a giant step toward ending this dark MAGA period in our history.

Keep working hard all. We are making a big difference at a time when history is calling us. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon