Simon, great news as always! I hit my thousandth phone bank call yesterday and am about to start on today's list. Is there a Founding Members zoom this week and, if so, did I miss the registration link?
Stunning stuff from Jack Smith and from Melania yesterday. Must admit I hardly expected a full-throated defense of Abortion Rights from her. (I am sure Demented Donald is seething next to the ketchup-splattered walls in his senior living center at Mar-a-Lago.)
I sincerely hope reproductive rights groups ask Melania for permission to include her video statement for an ad in Florida, and in every Republican-controlled state, where Abortion Rights are on the ballot! That would be noticed – and underscore that Trump is sad and extreme.
Wow, I'd heard about Smith, but not Melania. I don't think you're cynical. I just saw her video, and agree, it seems a way to muddy the waters to help their campaign. Laura Bush was also reportedly pro-choice, but that didn't matter policy-wise either. It's just a ploy.
Awesome!! We’re gonna win bc we’re doing the work. Here’s what my GenZ daughter and I have launched to GOTV on college campuses in battleground states!
🗳️DONUTS+DEMOCRACY
🍏 We have a signed on 32 colleges and universities and HBCUs in battleground states/districts to host DD tables to register and get young voters to the polls.
💰 We’ve raised $20K to fund donuts for the DD voter reg/GOTV events.
🍩We still need to raise another $20K in the next 4 days as more schools keep signing up.
🗳️In all of our years of political organizing, this is the most effective and least expensive GOTV. Voter engagement increases by 2x-10x per hour compared to our methods.
🚀 Our first event was yesterday in MT - check out the photos in the newsletter below.
🙏Please donate as generously as you can as time is of the essence and there is literally no better way to invest $$ in the last 4 weeks of the election than this.
YAY! I’d really like to add more Florida colleges/universities - if you know any Florida college students who’d be interested - please feel free to message me with their email. It’s super easy and fun!🦩
At the Michigan-Minnesota game last Saturday there was a huge Harris-Walz tent for registration and information on volunteering! Fabulous idea on college campuses around the country.
Congratulations. That must feel great. Somewhere in the next few weeks, I imagine we'll feel that we've banked a lot of votes and the collective energy of relief will hit us all.
This is great information. Thanks. My PA vote will be joining the list soon. Pretty sure the whole election will come down to PA mail in vote counting and that will be a battle well into December.
70/30 democrat/Maga in PA. I feel like having this data available is just making maga prepare even more to get rid of mail in votes in PA. At this ratio there is no reason for them to allow even one mail in vote to be counted on election day or after.
If I recall correctly, Pennsylvania Republicans *blocked* the preparation of received mail ballots that could have accelerated the count. I Election Day votes are counted first, we are not unlikely to see a Red Mirage during the first hours.
You are 100% correct-- it was the PA state legislature (R) that passed that right before the election. Then the red states that allowed early prep of mail-in ballots, like Texas and FL, attacked the PA Sec of State (D) and Governor (D) and continued to plant the seed of doubt. It was a well-orchestrated scheme to make it look like there was something untoward going on. Gave Trump the perfect opening to spew his totally fabricated nonsense.
Simon's video with paid subscribers hits the exact right point. A single debate is worth 20 campaign days, at least according to Matthew Dowd. We won't have another debate, so we all need to do a little extra to make up for it.
One more plea from me this week to think about getting involved with me here in North Carolina. We would love your help canvassing or making phone calls. Here is the link to sign up if you can do something more. I am working in Charlotte, which is a key area of focus. We can never have too many volunteers helping to turn out Democrats in Mecklenburg County!
The vote vets bus is headed to Fayetteville. Please send "not suckers or losers" to military, veterans' orgs, historical sites as comments daily to flip Trump 2020 voters. https://votevets.org/
Are Floridians aware that their own legislator, Rick Scott, voted to defund FEMA IN 2021? Texas Cruz, Georgia MTG , and many other repubs. If I just got walloped by a huge hurricane of the century, I would be livid.
And that Project 25 wants to get rid of FEMA and have states and local towns take over! In addition, they want to get rid of NOAA and the National Weather Service. I guess Trump with a Sharpie is all they need!
North Carolina: In the latest poll, Josh Stein has an astonishing 24-point lead over Mark Robinson! It’s impossible to imagine this not helping Kamala Harris, as well as Democrats in NC downticket races.
I agree completely. I know NC has a history of ticket splitting the Pres/Gov race, but that gap seems too large to be maintained. Stein's numbers won't go down, because Robinson is so toxic, so you have to think that the VP picks up a bit of support there too.
I like how quickly VP Harris's campaign put out SM ads tying Trump to Robinson. Keep SM and the airwaves flooded with these, as well as ads with positive contrast. On a very optimistic note, so glad that the Robinson dumpster fire actually moved the needle. It would have been very depressing if after all of this broke, polls remained the same. Who knows what will happen come Nov 5th, but at least this is encouraging. I know there's another side to the coin (it took something this extreme to move the needle), but I'm focusing on the positive :-)
Any sense of how hurricane victims (i.e., Asheville) will vote, given that they have no polling places, I imagine. I hear that many Democrats live in Asheville.
The State Board of Elections is working with local communities to set up locations for voting. Yes, Asheville is very Democratic, but candidly, the surrounding communities are very Republican and larger in total than Asheville. These areas are just catastrophically damaged, so it's hard to say what will be the end result. At this point, they are still just trying to get by day to day.
I'm just starting my new download of 100 postcards (Nos. 600-700) to NC for FieldTeam6, which instructs to mail them as they are completed. This list is all NC1 and NC13 on the eastern side, so delivery and impact should not be affected by the catastrophe in western NC.
Are you or other groups doing a lot of phone-banking to the Hispanic community? I am really curious as to which sentiments and concerns you’re encountering.
Others are having these conversations. There are Spanish speaking subsets of the Harris Walz phone bank.
My Spanish isn’t good enough to have an in depth political conversation, so I’m not as close to that group.
I’d say from the English preferred Latino people I’ve spoken with, their topics mirror the general population (including immigration - simplify the immigration process, but secure the border seems to be a reasonably popular view.).
Yes, since that includes more than half of the state of NM! The problem is not everyone making the calls speak Spanish as well as the people they are calling. Last time I tried to talk to someone talking to me in Spanish, the person responded in English with "Is that all you got?"
Initially I read that another way, but I think I know what you're referring to - people's views are baked in. Seriously thank you for your work & glad you remain undeterred !
Just wanted to say that I have taken your strategy to vote on Day One quite literally! We got our mail-in ballots in my county in Pennsylvania yesterday (Oct. 2). My husband, son, & I voted IMMEDIATELY…choosing every Democratic candidate up & down the ballot…then mailed our ballots on Day One, to bank those blue votes! We called our parents to make sure they received their ballots (they did) and to encourage them to vote and return their ballots as soon as possible—three more straight blue ballots. I have spoken to anyone who will listen about the importance of voting early in general, but especially for those of us in Pennsylvania. I’m attending a postcard writing party on Friday & have guided a group of like-minded voters to write 1,000 letters to PA voters. Hard work is indeed good work! Let’s all keep it up—in our family & friend circles and in our communities. This is how we win! 💙🗳️
I can't wait for to see Closing Strong. The discussion yesterday was great. A few random thoughts...
1. I try to do something every day, even if it's very small. Donate, write some letters/postcards, text voters, or just spread some Hopium.
2. Trump is diminishing and can no longer be in public outside his safe spaces. That means voters will see less of Trump's insanity but it also presents Harris and all of us an unprecedented opportunity to fill that vacuum, so I think it's a net benefit for us.
3. Trying to think of a new daily mantra. Maybe someone better with words can riff on this...
Joe Biden is a good president and the country is better off.
He's passed the torch to Kamala Harris and all of us.
Democrats have been kicking ass and winning elections all across the country and we're closing strong.
Meanwhile, Trump and Vance are the ugliest political thing we've ever seen.
I have been recruiting NYC friends to canvass for Josh Riley in NY19, an R-held toss-up, offering my family's home as a place to stay. Picking up a few shifts while enjoying a weekend upstate!
So glad to see both Josh Riley and Laura Gillen with modest leads in the polls! Of these four key New York congressional races, it seems only Mondaire Jones is struggling. I have yet to see a poll for John Avlon.
Interesting. Seems like any polls -3 to +3 basically show a tossup. You'd rather be seeing polls w you ahead, but all of these races will need a lot of volunteers
“I received this note from Laura Brill of The Civics Center (Empowering the Youth Vote in America through High School Voter Registration). We’ve been looking at voter files nonstop over the past few weeks, and what we are seeing is alarming. In AZ, OH, and GA, the voter registration deadline is Oct. 7, and fewer than 50% of 18-year-olds are registered. In PA, they have until Oct. 21 to register, but there, too, the registration rate for 18-year-olds remains under 50%.
In each state, that’s tens of thousands who are set to be disenfranchised by our country’s underinvestment in high school voter registration, combined with VR deadlines, lack of preregistration opportunities beginning at age 16, and other voter suppression laws.”
When young voters are registered, they vote in large percentages. Here’s how you can help:
Great video. Can you imagine trump handing out meals like that, surrounded by happy and energized people? trump would have taken a few minutes to throw a few meal boxes at the crowd and then scurried away after the photo op, which is the only reason he would deign to be in the presence of the every day people who so despises.
Throwing rolls of paper towel, maybe. Although I did see a recent video of Trump handing out burgers – although that was to promote his new crypto-coin.
Well, he knows that he is losing and he'll need all the $$ he can get for his 6 month DC trial, and others. Aside from repub desperation and mischief, they've got nothing.
Simon, great news as always! I hit my thousandth phone bank call yesterday and am about to start on today's list. Is there a Founding Members zoom this week and, if so, did I miss the registration link?
Wow, you're a hero!
No, just a nonna who wants her grandson to grow up in a democracy. But thank you!
I did not get a link yet either for the Founding Members
Check your email and click on the search icon at the top of this page.
you're an inspiration!
Thank you! You're an inspiration!
You're the Michael Jordan-- the GOAT-- of Hopium. Thank you!
Thank you Simon.
Stunning stuff from Jack Smith and from Melania yesterday. Must admit I hardly expected a full-throated defense of Abortion Rights from her. (I am sure Demented Donald is seething next to the ketchup-splattered walls in his senior living center at Mar-a-Lago.)
I sincerely hope reproductive rights groups ask Melania for permission to include her video statement for an ad in Florida, and in every Republican-controlled state, where Abortion Rights are on the ballot! That would be noticed – and underscore that Trump is sad and extreme.
https://nitter.poast.org/RonFilipkowski/status/1841815445390680081#m
Wow, I'd heard about Smith, but not Melania. I don't think you're cynical. I just saw her video, and agree, it seems a way to muddy the waters to help their campaign. Laura Bush was also reportedly pro-choice, but that didn't matter policy-wise either. It's just a ploy.
Sorry but I don't trust that grifter who asked for President Obama's birth certificate. Seems like another grift opportunity for her. Call me cynical.
Awesome!! We’re gonna win bc we’re doing the work. Here’s what my GenZ daughter and I have launched to GOTV on college campuses in battleground states!
🗳️DONUTS+DEMOCRACY
🍏 We have a signed on 32 colleges and universities and HBCUs in battleground states/districts to host DD tables to register and get young voters to the polls.
💰 We’ve raised $20K to fund donuts for the DD voter reg/GOTV events.
🍩We still need to raise another $20K in the next 4 days as more schools keep signing up.
🗳️In all of our years of political organizing, this is the most effective and least expensive GOTV. Voter engagement increases by 2x-10x per hour compared to our methods.
🚀 Our first event was yesterday in MT - check out the photos in the newsletter below.
🙏Please donate as generously as you can as time is of the essence and there is literally no better way to invest $$ in the last 4 weeks of the election than this.
More here: https://open.substack.com/pub/democratsdeliver/p/looking-for-the-helpers-updated?r=51f18&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Can you provide a donation link?
Thank you for asking! Venmo link is in the email. 🗳️🍩
I’m so glad to see you are doing a table at our HBCU in FL (FL A&M). The venmo link worked well for me!
YAY! I’d really like to add more Florida colleges/universities - if you know any Florida college students who’d be interested - please feel free to message me with their email. It’s super easy and fun!🦩
Also, thank you SO much for your donation!! 🍩🗳️🩵
At the Michigan-Minnesota game last Saturday there was a huge Harris-Walz tent for registration and information on volunteering! Fabulous idea on college campuses around the country.
Love it!
What a wonderful video of VP Harris. That is the US President I want to see in office--someone who has a heart and a mind for all Americans.
Yes have we seen T anywhere near the disaster areas doing anything?
He IS his own disaster area.
He went to Valdosta and gave a political speech in front of relief trucks. Didn't lift a finger.
He went with Franklin Graham. Thoughts and prayers There was a truck that presumably had some sort of aid.
And she wasn't throwing paper towels at anyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmOIKTzrBWM
EARLY VOTE OVER ONE MILLION**
As of 10am, at least 963,673 Early Votes have been cast. These 15 states have at least 5000 votes:
VA 346,774
NJ 111,337*
WI 99,283
MD 95,697*
MI 62,869
IL 47,509
FL 45,526*
PA 33,408*
MN 32,788
IN 22,765
ID 20,662*
SD 12,498*
NC 11,884*
TX 8,601
CO 5,921*
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/
* Eight of the 15 states above report party registration: CO, FL, ID, MD, NJ, NC, PA, SD.
** UPDATE 11:30am: One million reached! More precisely, 1,061,622.
Whereof In-Person Early Votes: 323,002 • Mail Ballots Returned: 738,620
I voted early yesterday in PA…as did my husband, son, & three elderly parents…all straight blue ballots.
Great, thank you! Get all your peeps to do the same!
Congratulations. That must feel great. Somewhere in the next few weeks, I imagine we'll feel that we've banked a lot of votes and the collective energy of relief will hit us all.
This is great information. Thanks. My PA vote will be joining the list soon. Pretty sure the whole election will come down to PA mail in vote counting and that will be a battle well into December.
Awesome, thank you thank you, get all your peeps there to do the same, LFG!
70/30 democrat/Maga in PA. I feel like having this data available is just making maga prepare even more to get rid of mail in votes in PA. At this ratio there is no reason for them to allow even one mail in vote to be counted on election day or after.
If I recall correctly, Pennsylvania Republicans *blocked* the preparation of received mail ballots that could have accelerated the count. I Election Day votes are counted first, we are not unlikely to see a Red Mirage during the first hours.
You are 100% correct-- it was the PA state legislature (R) that passed that right before the election. Then the red states that allowed early prep of mail-in ballots, like Texas and FL, attacked the PA Sec of State (D) and Governor (D) and continued to plant the seed of doubt. It was a well-orchestrated scheme to make it look like there was something untoward going on. Gave Trump the perfect opening to spew his totally fabricated nonsense.
Simon's video with paid subscribers hits the exact right point. A single debate is worth 20 campaign days, at least according to Matthew Dowd. We won't have another debate, so we all need to do a little extra to make up for it.
One more plea from me this week to think about getting involved with me here in North Carolina. We would love your help canvassing or making phone calls. Here is the link to sign up if you can do something more. I am working in Charlotte, which is a key area of focus. We can never have too many volunteers helping to turn out Democrats in Mecklenburg County!
https://www.mobilize.us/ncdems/
The vote vets bus is headed to Fayetteville. Please send "not suckers or losers" to military, veterans' orgs, historical sites as comments daily to flip Trump 2020 voters. https://votevets.org/
I saw the Vote Vets bus driving towards PA on the way to work this morning!
Are Floridians aware that their own legislator, Rick Scott, voted to defund FEMA IN 2021? Texas Cruz, Georgia MTG , and many other repubs. If I just got walloped by a huge hurricane of the century, I would be livid.
And that Project 25 wants to get rid of FEMA and have states and local towns take over! In addition, they want to get rid of NOAA and the National Weather Service. I guess Trump with a Sharpie is all they need!
It appears that 🍊😵💫 is choosing the cities in which that may happen! 🤔
North Carolina: In the latest poll, Josh Stein has an astonishing 24-point lead over Mark Robinson! It’s impossible to imagine this not helping Kamala Harris, as well as Democrats in NC downticket races.
I agree completely. I know NC has a history of ticket splitting the Pres/Gov race, but that gap seems too large to be maintained. Stein's numbers won't go down, because Robinson is so toxic, so you have to think that the VP picks up a bit of support there too.
I like how quickly VP Harris's campaign put out SM ads tying Trump to Robinson. Keep SM and the airwaves flooded with these, as well as ads with positive contrast. On a very optimistic note, so glad that the Robinson dumpster fire actually moved the needle. It would have been very depressing if after all of this broke, polls remained the same. Who knows what will happen come Nov 5th, but at least this is encouraging. I know there's another side to the coin (it took something this extreme to move the needle), but I'm focusing on the positive :-)
Yay!!!!
I am making calls w SURJ (Showing up for Racial Justice), they are doing a bunch of phone banks in to NC. Thanks for your work!
Thank you for your work as well!!!
Any sense of how hurricane victims (i.e., Asheville) will vote, given that they have no polling places, I imagine. I hear that many Democrats live in Asheville.
The State Board of Elections is working with local communities to set up locations for voting. Yes, Asheville is very Democratic, but candidly, the surrounding communities are very Republican and larger in total than Asheville. These areas are just catastrophically damaged, so it's hard to say what will be the end result. At this point, they are still just trying to get by day to day.
I'm just starting my new download of 100 postcards (Nos. 600-700) to NC for FieldTeam6, which instructs to mail them as they are completed. This list is all NC1 and NC13 on the eastern side, so delivery and impact should not be affected by the catastrophe in western NC.
Phone banking with AZ voters, not encountering many persuadable voters. I think the vast majority of people have decided which candidate they prefer.
I think we’re at/near the point where people are deciding whether to vote or stay home.
Time to turn out that vote! Keep calling, writing, and talking to people about the importance of their vote! Our efforts can make that difference!
Are you or other groups doing a lot of phone-banking to the Hispanic community? I am really curious as to which sentiments and concerns you’re encountering.
Others are having these conversations. There are Spanish speaking subsets of the Harris Walz phone bank.
My Spanish isn’t good enough to have an in depth political conversation, so I’m not as close to that group.
I’d say from the English preferred Latino people I’ve spoken with, their topics mirror the general population (including immigration - simplify the immigration process, but secure the border seems to be a reasonably popular view.).
Thank you. And thank you for your service!
AZ registration deadline is Oct. 7. FT 6 is still texting, calling, unregistered AZ folk who trend Democratic.
When you use the FT 6 database you do not waste time on MAGATs.
https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/
Yes, since that includes more than half of the state of NM! The problem is not everyone making the calls speak Spanish as well as the people they are calling. Last time I tried to talk to someone talking to me in Spanish, the person responded in English with "Is that all you got?"
You might still be identifying, not persuading. It's easier to help GOTV when you know where the vote is!
Initially I read that another way, but I think I know what you're referring to - people's views are baked in. Seriously thank you for your work & glad you remain undeterred !
Just wanted to say that I have taken your strategy to vote on Day One quite literally! We got our mail-in ballots in my county in Pennsylvania yesterday (Oct. 2). My husband, son, & I voted IMMEDIATELY…choosing every Democratic candidate up & down the ballot…then mailed our ballots on Day One, to bank those blue votes! We called our parents to make sure they received their ballots (they did) and to encourage them to vote and return their ballots as soon as possible—three more straight blue ballots. I have spoken to anyone who will listen about the importance of voting early in general, but especially for those of us in Pennsylvania. I’m attending a postcard writing party on Friday & have guided a group of like-minded voters to write 1,000 letters to PA voters. Hard work is indeed good work! Let’s all keep it up—in our family & friend circles and in our communities. This is how we win! 💙🗳️
I can't wait for to see Closing Strong. The discussion yesterday was great. A few random thoughts...
1. I try to do something every day, even if it's very small. Donate, write some letters/postcards, text voters, or just spread some Hopium.
2. Trump is diminishing and can no longer be in public outside his safe spaces. That means voters will see less of Trump's insanity but it also presents Harris and all of us an unprecedented opportunity to fill that vacuum, so I think it's a net benefit for us.
3. Trying to think of a new daily mantra. Maybe someone better with words can riff on this...
Joe Biden is a good president and the country is better off.
He's passed the torch to Kamala Harris and all of us.
Democrats have been kicking ass and winning elections all across the country and we're closing strong.
Meanwhile, Trump and Vance are the ugliest political thing we've ever seen.
Thank you for your leadership, Simon. We are following.
Wow!
I have been recruiting NYC friends to canvass for Josh Riley in NY19, an R-held toss-up, offering my family's home as a place to stay. Picking up a few shifts while enjoying a weekend upstate!
So glad to see both Josh Riley and Laura Gillen with modest leads in the polls! Of these four key New York congressional races, it seems only Mondaire Jones is struggling. I have yet to see a poll for John Avlon.
o Josh Riley (NY-19), +3
o Laura Gillen (NY-04), +3
o John Avlon (NY-01) ??
o Mondaire Jones (NY-17), –3
Interesting. Seems like any polls -3 to +3 basically show a tossup. You'd rather be seeing polls w you ahead, but all of these races will need a lot of volunteers
Check out winningthehouse.com as there should be postcard opportunities for a lot of these candidates
From Robert E. Hubbell today’s Substack article https://open.substack.com/pub/roberthubbell/p/so-what?r=3a33y&utm_medium=ios:
“I received this note from Laura Brill of The Civics Center (Empowering the Youth Vote in America through High School Voter Registration). We’ve been looking at voter files nonstop over the past few weeks, and what we are seeing is alarming. In AZ, OH, and GA, the voter registration deadline is Oct. 7, and fewer than 50% of 18-year-olds are registered. In PA, they have until Oct. 21 to register, but there, too, the registration rate for 18-year-olds remains under 50%.
In each state, that’s tens of thousands who are set to be disenfranchised by our country’s underinvestment in high school voter registration, combined with VR deadlines, lack of preregistration opportunities beginning at age 16, and other voter suppression laws.”
When young voters are registered, they vote in large percentages. Here’s how you can help:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecivicscenter/p/what-can-i-do-to-help?r=3a33y&utm_medium=ios
Please share and hopefully people will help with this.
I've been sharing this, too. So important!
Great video. Can you imagine trump handing out meals like that, surrounded by happy and energized people? trump would have taken a few minutes to throw a few meal boxes at the crowd and then scurried away after the photo op, which is the only reason he would deign to be in the presence of the every day people who so despises.
Throwing rolls of paper towel, maybe. Although I did see a recent video of Trump handing out burgers – although that was to promote his new crypto-coin.
🤣
Well, he knows that he is losing and he'll need all the $$ he can get for his 6 month DC trial, and others. Aside from repub desperation and mischief, they've got nothing.
The postcard writing continues, 200 more to go but it will get done (i'll sleep when I'm dead). Btw @Simon, Shana Tova!