I just watched Suozzi on MSNBC and was disappointed that he did not once mention the great economic news and Biden's accomplishments, and found it strange that he chose to equate the actions of the right wing MAGA extremists with the left. Saying both sides have a problem is not the message we want to give. The Democrats make deals, the Republicans obstruct. Biden is the ultimate bipartisan player. It's a shame Suozzi chose to disassociate from Biden's accomplishments and his history of being able to reach across the aisle. Yes both presidential candidates are under water in the polls, but one is facing 91 counts and the other occasionally mixes up words (which he always has).
A few points: 1) Tom does say like Biden he wants to work across the aisle to get things done, and does directly hug Biden 2) Biden's numbers in this district right now are not good, and if Tom embraced him, aggressively, at this moment, it would make it harder to reach voters he needs to reach. That's the cold hard reality of where NY and this district are, places we have struggled to win in in recent years and where the Democratic brand is not in good shape. 3) There is no single message for the Party, every candidate has to be been given the space to run their own races in ways they understand. Easy to Monday morning quarterback candidate messaging, but this stuff is very hard and we have to give our candidates space to run the races they think they have to run to win. Tom has a lot more experience winning here than any of us, and we need to be deferential to him. 4) In general I am not a big fan of the entire concept of "messaging" - it's not how it works in campaigns. All these arguments and words and policies have to be distilled by an actual person with values and life experiences into a story, an argument, a governing agenda - something much more powerful than a "message" to break through all the noise and reach voters. To me the word "message" is not really what we are trying to do. It's too ephemeral, weak; we want to make and win arguments, tell powerful stories, offer a compelling agenda grounded in the candidate's own life, values and experiences - it is something much more important than moving a "message."
Thank you Simon. I support Suozzi and like his message as well, and he did single out obstruction on the border and funding, but I do think over time Democratic officials need to get away from the “both sides are bad” language.
This is good to remember, because Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown are likely going to have to distance themselves from Biden to win.
Blue state messaging that BIDEN is great won’t work in red states- they need to convince voters to vote for them, not for Biden. It’s hard to swallow when Dems are publicly critical of the party/the president, but a lot of candidates need to be seen as “independent” in order to win their race.
True. However, there is a balance to be struck. They need to show independence – but without kicking dirt on President Biden and the Democratic brand. For to do so causes profound damage and hurts other Democratic candidates, not just Biden.
Folks please don’t take it personally, that Tom didn’t check boxes off some imaginary list of your Hopium Ideal candidate on a single MSN hit hours before his crazy tough election facing a loud entrenched R chaos machine.
We can’t get blown around.
We have to have faith in Tom, Joe, Andy, so many others to understand the pulse of THEIR campaigns. (Simon too! (-; ).
These people have decades of experience that is working in real time. His last bit was ‘I will get sworn in and tell both sides ‘Wake up! .... Let’s get something done!’ Obviously that is what HE KNOWS his voter’s need to hear.
His interview is not meant as a snub of Biden or Dems, it is strategy to get voters in his district to trust him and vote for him. Idk, we just can’t pick apart every hit or something said or left out, when we know someone is on the side of democracy, have faith and say something positive!
B, it is not an imaginary list. I do not want our candidates to say the Democrats are bad. That is close to my only requirement. I watched Tom's interview and it was fine, he only lightly dem bashed, but my stage notes is the did it in the most ineffective way possible.
I fully support candidates having room to craft their message, but bashing Dems is a poor ticktack. I have yet to meet someone in my life who believes it and only met people who it turns off.
A Democrat saying I will stand up to my party, and both sides are bad is an ineffective way to criticize the status quo. This is a lesson that both Obama and Trump understood. Obama always criticized Washington, cynics and corrupts influences, Trump demonized The Swamp. It is effective because it allows the audience to cast the problems on the group/class they are the most annoyed with and setting the politician aside and gives them wide latitude to critique bureaucracy, lobbyist, and the media. Most notably it does not directly cast aspersions on your own party.
In the rare circumstance where it is beneficial to try to ride a wave against the lean of a state or district and Dem bash, they are way better off saying I will be a voice of reason in my party, they should be trying to define themselves as righteous/moderate/sane and promising to bring the party to them. In this way it makes the candidate look strong and presents the party in a more positive light.
Suozzi utterly demolished Mazi Pilip in their debate, especially on the issue of abortion – astutely pushing her into a corner where her "Women should be free to choose" message was unveiled as a meaningless, blatant lie. For anybody watching who is not a Forced-Birther, especially women voters, that is likely to score decisive points. Well done!
Thank you for this. Messaging seems to me too much like commercial sound bites--like you're selling shoes or toothpaste. We aren't selling Joe Biden, we are defending democracy from would-be autocrats. We don't want this to happen. Somehow, we have to reach people who don't viscerally understand the difference between the two. There's more to it than the popular perception of electing a "strong man." A lot more.
Agreed, we can not get blown around and down on a decision of strategic language, on one interview hours before his competitive. Stay resolute. Stay positive. Zoom out.
Agree completely! And I’m sure Biden would as well. One of the greatest strengths Biden has is that he’s devoid of the typical ego most politicians have. In the midterms, he realized that his poor favorability meant that it would be better for certain candidates to distance themselves from him and stress that they weren’t afraid to vote against the “party line” if they disagreed with a particular policy. Mark Kelly did this as well Raphael Warnock and Tim Ryan (though sadly not quite as successfully).
When Fetterman was campaigning in Pennsylvania, Biden joined him at the rally in Philadelphia (more urban and diverse with a lot more Hilary/Biden voters) but he sent Obama to the rally in Pittsburgh (a traditional steel town with a lot more Trump/Biden voters).
Unlike Trump, Biden doesn’t need people to fawn over him or say he’s perfect. Maybe this hurts his favorability ratings at times, but I think that’s OK and to be expected when you have a big tent coalition. Republican voters are much more homogeneous than Democrats. If big tent coalitions focus too much on a single “message” or don’t take the time to understand and speak to different voter concerns and discuss those, then the coalition falls apart.
The only consistent and common message we should have is that we’re pro-America, pro-freedom and pro-democracy. If you think these things are important, you should join us. Welcome.
I came here to say the exact same thing. I'm very disappointed. He sounded like a lot of the "bothsidesism" writers for MSM that we at Hopium are always trying to refute.
Have you seen this post from Lucian Truscott? I thought he made some great points about discounting the surface stuff and paying attention to the fundamentals.
Hopium member James Parks just posted this on another post here at Hopium:
Donated to Tom and am proud I did after watching the debate and really getting a clear look at the insanity of his opponent! Go Team Suozzi! The difference between what the Dems are offering and what MAGA is offering could not be more stark and I feel thankful I'm on this side. Jill Biden's note was just perfect and emblematic of they are as people and why I voted for Jos Biden to begin with. Kindness. Grace. Empathy. Dignity and Quiet strength. Thank you Hopium! VOE BLUE
I posted my reply to Amy's message before you posted yours. Don't worry, I wasn't trying to bash how Tom runs his campaign. Just express my disappointment with the wide-spread bothsidesism and the apparent need for it.
I just watched Suozzi’s interview on Morning Joe. Same thing there: no mention of President Biden’s stellar economic accomplishments and post-pandemic recovery, which are the envy of the world! Moreover, Suozzi uttered not a single word about the Senate bipartisan Border-Ukraine-Israel-FarEast deal – nor that Trump and House Democrats are obstructing and sabotaging it.
Yes, Suozzi is far better than Pilip, but I intensely dislike the bothsiderism he expressed on Morning Joe. This is NOT how we build the Democratic brand and generate enthusiasm for it!
Exactly! Going on offense means taking the megaphone and bragging about the Biden economic record that few in the media will spotlight - AND praising all the bipartisan legislation Biden has signed into law in the last 3 years (when no one said bipartisan could happen). It's also pointing out that Biden supports and would sign into law the bipartisan border deal negotiated in the Senate. I'd love to see all members in the Democratic caucus go on offense, loud and proud to support our amazing President and his steady, experienced, extraordinary leadership!!!
Agreed Amy–he also relied heavily on MAGA Repub talking points on ‘closed border’ and ‘build the wall’ rather than lifting up our country’s long-standing democratic values of providing opportunity for people who move themselves and their families for a better life, whether they are fleeing persecution for their beliefs or trying to survive economically.
America is a great nation because unlike so many other places we welcome the best, brightest with opportunity and our strength is in the rich diversity of experiences, perspectives, and minds working on the important problems we face.
E Pluribus Unum.
Immigration is an asset that we need to better manage and leverage.
We do a disservice to ourselves, our history and our future when promote MAGA propaganda that scapegoats and demonizes people making the ultimate sacrifice of leaving their home, their families, friends and language behind to move to a new place.
I spent some time fishing LI Sound this past fall. It was City Island, right across from this district; The guys who own the boats were distinctly anti-Biden and complaining about the economy ( even though they were carrying customers on a weekday during the school year and it's all retirees at that point ). The customers OTOH, were mostly POCs retired from city jobs and schools. All were disgusted by trump. I don't know who lived where ( I'm sure the captains don't live in the city, and probably the retirees don't either; I drove in from NJ ). But there were more customers than captains, and the crews were also anti-trump ( that's a difference from NJ ) so do we outnumber them? Without polling the customers to see where they lived, who knows. A trip to New Rochelle, also very close, revealed similar opinions. But that was Veteran's Day and featured a lot of state workers and teachers who were off, and kids too. A big enough turnout that the captain had to carry an additional crew member ( bad economy? These trips are a hundred bucks, a dad and two kids...) So, like a lot of places, there are different people you have to appeal to in this area. In these cases, you are fighting for the people who really dislike politics and hate both sides. I think that might favor Tom here, after the Santos disaster. Also, there's gonna be more snow tomorrow than expected.....whichever party votes more on Election Day, might be the one losing voters. Or will indies show up in the snow? It won't be a huge storm, and should be outta here by noon, but it looks to be the biggest in a few years, potentially.
Yeah, we need to push on this (maybe after 2024). I don’t think this - pox on both your houses - approach works as he - in this case - is a Democrat and he’s better off just tarnishing the Rs and not himself but he’s an old school pol who thinks he can win the middle this way. It’s NYT/inside the beltway/No labels BS that is designed to appeal to political reporters and not voters. But, we don’t have time now to address this. We just need to get him elected!
I agree. I’ve given to the Suozzi campaign 3 times and I do not live in New York. If Democrats can’t state the facts that the Republican Party is currently an extremist obstructionist party who will? The media certainly won’t.
It’s getting so discouraging to see how the mainstream media seems to be running the 2016 playbook again- trying to make it a horse race between the candidates by deliberately going after the Dem candidate while ignoring the clear threat posed by Trump.
I really try not to lose hope, but even after the election, if we win- what do we do about this??
As Robert Hubbell has written, it’s time to go on the offensive and stay on the offensive. Hit them where it hurts. Many people are letting NYT know that it can’t claim to be independent anymore if it’s serving up GOP talking points and lies as if they were truth. Jamison Foser’s substack also has more on why it’s good to go on the offensive against the media because, he writes, we can make pro-Democratic Party arguments at the same time.
And support good media! Send your subscription dollars to Simon, other substackers, ProPublica, your local journalists. They need the money more than the Times does.
I don’t know where the best place is to discuss this, but there is a VERY coordinated (to me) campaign happening on TikTok regarding Palestine. Every post about the Super Bowl by NFL, ESPN, the Chiefs, the 49ers (basically the big accounts)- the comment section is 95% posts about Palestine. It’s definitely coordinated, a lot of the accounts look like bots, the phrasing of the comments are identical, but the scope of it is startling. It’s thousands of posts on big accounts, and it feels…nefarious. Like a coordinated campaign to get young people mad at the Biden administration.
this is foreign nation state stuff. The volume you are seeing can only be from foreign nation state. I felt the same thing the weekend of October 7th itself. The scale of the attacks on me were unprecedented, as if someone knew these attacks were coming and were ready to go after, hard, anyone showing sympathy to Israel. The obvious nation that could be behind this is Iran, though it could be russia too
It feels VERY foreign interference- a lot of the repeated comments have incorrect grammar, for instance.
Foreign interference in our elections is a continuing problem, our media is not even close to being up to the task, and democracy is under attack from all quarters.
I believe Biden will win in 2024, but I’m scared for what comes next because this problem isn’t going away.
Ctkat1, on a related note: I am an avid reader and occasional commenter on "The Times of Israel". There I notice a very different organized campaign. Whenever President Biden is mentioned or is tangentially relevant to an article, there is a flood of anti-Biden / pro-Trump comments.
Sure, some of these are real and sincere. But what is striking is how many of the most vile comments are from posters who have almost no history, often at most a handful of comments. This has convinced me that this, too, is a campaign – combining real people and bots.
Is there a way to report these comments? I have a WaPo subscription and I will report when a commenter posts the same message dozens of times within the same article or is way out of line. In addition, when someone engages with one of these likely bots, I reply to their message telling them "not to feed the trolls" and often point out when the account was opened recently. Then I explain how they can ignore the troll/bot.
There is and I have, but usually I reserve that for when someone is voicing very extreme positions, promoting violence, promoting conspiracy theories, or posting a collection of blatant falsehoods.
Regretfully, there are also discussion threads that are so saturated with insincere negative posts that I simply choose not to engage.
I'm surprised no one has been using the word "traitor" to describe Trump, especially after his recent NATO warnings. Clearly Trump serves Putin not US.
Streets are already being pretreated here in NJ. Got a couple guys from the Bronx replacing a windshield for me right now; turned on the defroster during the last snow storm. Bad idea. Never lost one like that before.
I appreciate the positive posts because the negativity is so thick you could cut it with a knife. I also appreciate you reminding us that the Democratic Party is strong with good leadership going forward. That helps. It truly does. I still do not understand why Trump was not prosecuted a long time ago, but I'm not going to go down any conspiracy theory rabbit holes. There is so much noise going on right now it is sometimes difficult to keep your head from spinning. That said, my single, overarching goal is to see Trump and MAGA lose big time.
My own take on Tom’s Morning Joe hit, after watching it a couple times is this:
He’s relying on a national information campaign contrasting the the D & R brands that is already underway on the air and social media communicating that Rs are controlled by a dangerous authoritarian movement that will lead to constraints on our individual freedoms and bring severe American decline. That and our new enormous grassroots led field operations are pushing our base turnout to its highest capacity in many decades.
I think his earned media comments that feel gratuitously “both sidesy” are really just an effort to improve the persuasion factor among the least informed voters in his district who still turn out to the polls due to socialization. I view it less as an attack on the Democratic Party and more of a attack on “extremism”, which is a central argument we will be making all the way up and down the ballot all over the country all year long. I think it’s a pretty smart comm strategy there, because there’s already a sense among pretty much every D leaning and truly persuadable voter baked into the cake that Trump is an extremist….so running against extremism is going to be a very effective strategy for every D at every level this year. Tactically, it will be more advantageous in some jurisdictions to run against extremism in general, and in others it will be more effective to run against extremism of Rs specifically….but it all adds up to campaigns FOR reasonable behavior and good faith efforts to deliver progress to the American people and AGAINST the dangers and regressiveness of extremism….and if that is the basic metric of the election, we will win the base voter battle, the turnout battle, AND the persuasion battle.
So, in summary, I don’t think that kind of rhetoric in certain competitive districts and states hurts our party brand much, because I think the message that emerges from it is an indictment of extremism, rather than “pox on both sides”….and the Rs are in hand cuffs and straight jackets this year in any attempts they might make to portray themselves as “not extreme” with Trump as their standard bearer, and his demands of absolute loyalty and fealty to him in their discourse and behavior.
As for snow, 2 points: 1) you never know how this will impact turnout 2) GOP is more reliant on election day voters than we are so in theory this is more dangerous for them than for us but we will find out tomorrow! Just keep working hard all - S
Simon I am deeply disappointed in the tempest in a teapot treatment of Biden's age while he is running against a rapist criminal who attempted to overturn a free and fair election. I'm curious about what you're hearing from journalists behind the scenes as they attempt to explain and justify their terrible behavior.
Journalists write the articles – but it is the editors and the desk who choose the headlines, which articles to emphasize, which stories to place on the front page above the fold or have as lead articles on the evening news.
A tragic development is the degree to which news has become infotainment. Increasingly, it is about clicks / number of readers / number of viewers. Why? Because this is what the advertisers care about. Thus it is what most owners/shareholders care about – and therefore these become the metrics by which "success" is measured.
Having good journalists is not enough, because the overall news coverage can still get seriously warped on the way to the reader and viewer.
Ironically, the Times is almost completely dependent on essentially us - 10 million mostly progressive subscribers for their business. They have moved to a digital subscription model. The Times editors are strangely focused on their own relevance (to those in power on the right) rather than serving their subscribers. The same crew that played a big role in getting Trump elected the first time - with the focus on HIllary’s emails, Comey - is still in charge. We need to find a way to organize the subscribers and push the paper to focus on journalism rather than this BS.
The Washington Post has also experienced a rightward slide in recent years. For this reason, my wife and I have cancelled our subscriptions to WaPo after previously ditching the Times.
These days our preferred reads are The Guardian, The American Prospect, Daniel Nichanian’s excellent Bolts Magazine, some BBC, and writers such as Heather Cox Richardson (indispensable!), Timothy Snyder, Sam Wang – and of course Simon Rosenberg!
This snow storm is starting to blow up and is looking pretty bad right now, with 8-12 being progged in much of LI. That's major no matter where you live, and who knows what it might mean. Keep in mind that such a storm has not been seen in a couple years up here. NYC schools already closed. This was not supposed to happen ( and hell it may still not ). That's mother nature.
Looking for news about NY-3 (looks good! We just have to get out the vote) - and checked out Dave Wasserman’s twitter (not going to link to it but just go and look at his feed if curious). He’s dedicated many posts to “why I was right and not wrong” about the 2022 red wave that did not come) and cites Nate Cohn at the NYT. He and Cohn are basically arguing that the polling (and I!) are still right and that what happened is polling was - because of too many engaged Dem voters - wrong in 2022 but will be right in 2024? It just doesn’t make sense. Why would pollsters NOT be able to model the electorate that would turn out in 2022? And, if they could NOT do it in 2022, why can they do it in 2024, when the electorate will be more complex, harder to model? These guys, the NYT and others are like the fax machine industry when we moved to email, defenders of an increasingly irrelevant industry (polling industrial complex). All to say, tell your friends, ignore these dummies and vote, work, organize give and kick some more butt!
I am concerned about Biden’s weakness in the face of Israel’s rampant and indiscriminate violence in Gaza. We need to hold back aid to Israel. Many many Democrats, especially the young, are totally disillusioned by what looks to be collusion in a genocide taking place right now.
I just watched Suozzi on MSNBC and was disappointed that he did not once mention the great economic news and Biden's accomplishments, and found it strange that he chose to equate the actions of the right wing MAGA extremists with the left. Saying both sides have a problem is not the message we want to give. The Democrats make deals, the Republicans obstruct. Biden is the ultimate bipartisan player. It's a shame Suozzi chose to disassociate from Biden's accomplishments and his history of being able to reach across the aisle. Yes both presidential candidates are under water in the polls, but one is facing 91 counts and the other occasionally mixes up words (which he always has).
A few points: 1) Tom does say like Biden he wants to work across the aisle to get things done, and does directly hug Biden 2) Biden's numbers in this district right now are not good, and if Tom embraced him, aggressively, at this moment, it would make it harder to reach voters he needs to reach. That's the cold hard reality of where NY and this district are, places we have struggled to win in in recent years and where the Democratic brand is not in good shape. 3) There is no single message for the Party, every candidate has to be been given the space to run their own races in ways they understand. Easy to Monday morning quarterback candidate messaging, but this stuff is very hard and we have to give our candidates space to run the races they think they have to run to win. Tom has a lot more experience winning here than any of us, and we need to be deferential to him. 4) In general I am not a big fan of the entire concept of "messaging" - it's not how it works in campaigns. All these arguments and words and policies have to be distilled by an actual person with values and life experiences into a story, an argument, a governing agenda - something much more powerful than a "message" to break through all the noise and reach voters. To me the word "message" is not really what we are trying to do. It's too ephemeral, weak; we want to make and win arguments, tell powerful stories, offer a compelling agenda grounded in the candidate's own life, values and experiences - it is something much more important than moving a "message."
Thank you Simon. I support Suozzi and like his message as well, and he did single out obstruction on the border and funding, but I do think over time Democratic officials need to get away from the “both sides are bad” language.
This is good to remember, because Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown are likely going to have to distance themselves from Biden to win.
Blue state messaging that BIDEN is great won’t work in red states- they need to convince voters to vote for them, not for Biden. It’s hard to swallow when Dems are publicly critical of the party/the president, but a lot of candidates need to be seen as “independent” in order to win their race.
True. However, there is a balance to be struck. They need to show independence – but without kicking dirt on President Biden and the Democratic brand. For to do so causes profound damage and hurts other Democratic candidates, not just Biden.
It can be done, read about Andy Beshear.
Folks please don’t take it personally, that Tom didn’t check boxes off some imaginary list of your Hopium Ideal candidate on a single MSN hit hours before his crazy tough election facing a loud entrenched R chaos machine.
We can’t get blown around.
We have to have faith in Tom, Joe, Andy, so many others to understand the pulse of THEIR campaigns. (Simon too! (-; ).
These people have decades of experience that is working in real time. His last bit was ‘I will get sworn in and tell both sides ‘Wake up! .... Let’s get something done!’ Obviously that is what HE KNOWS his voter’s need to hear.
His interview is not meant as a snub of Biden or Dems, it is strategy to get voters in his district to trust him and vote for him. Idk, we just can’t pick apart every hit or something said or left out, when we know someone is on the side of democracy, have faith and say something positive!
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/11/7/23950792/election-day-2023-kentucky-governors-race-results-democrats-republicans
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/kentucky-governor-race-beshear-cameron/675908/
I assure you Biden will NOT take offense to ‘Biden and tRump are both underwater’ Tom speaking of his electorate’s perspective.
Biden will WELCOME Tom!
Biden gets it.
B, it is not an imaginary list. I do not want our candidates to say the Democrats are bad. That is close to my only requirement. I watched Tom's interview and it was fine, he only lightly dem bashed, but my stage notes is the did it in the most ineffective way possible.
I fully support candidates having room to craft their message, but bashing Dems is a poor ticktack. I have yet to meet someone in my life who believes it and only met people who it turns off.
A Democrat saying I will stand up to my party, and both sides are bad is an ineffective way to criticize the status quo. This is a lesson that both Obama and Trump understood. Obama always criticized Washington, cynics and corrupts influences, Trump demonized The Swamp. It is effective because it allows the audience to cast the problems on the group/class they are the most annoyed with and setting the politician aside and gives them wide latitude to critique bureaucracy, lobbyist, and the media. Most notably it does not directly cast aspersions on your own party.
In the rare circumstance where it is beneficial to try to ride a wave against the lean of a state or district and Dem bash, they are way better off saying I will be a voice of reason in my party, they should be trying to define themselves as righteous/moderate/sane and promising to bring the party to them. In this way it makes the candidate look strong and presents the party in a more positive light.
When Dems distanced themselves from Nancy Pelosi to win tough districts, she told them, "Win, baby, win!"
Suozzi utterly demolished Mazi Pilip in their debate, especially on the issue of abortion – astutely pushing her into a corner where her "Women should be free to choose" message was unveiled as a meaningless, blatant lie. For anybody watching who is not a Forced-Birther, especially women voters, that is likely to score decisive points. Well done!
Thank you for this. Messaging seems to me too much like commercial sound bites--like you're selling shoes or toothpaste. We aren't selling Joe Biden, we are defending democracy from would-be autocrats. We don't want this to happen. Somehow, we have to reach people who don't viscerally understand the difference between the two. There's more to it than the popular perception of electing a "strong man." A lot more.
Agreed, we can not get blown around and down on a decision of strategic language, on one interview hours before his competitive. Stay resolute. Stay positive. Zoom out.
This is helpful. I also cringed when Tom S. Said… Both sides underwater but you put it in a perspective to be taken into account.
Agree completely! And I’m sure Biden would as well. One of the greatest strengths Biden has is that he’s devoid of the typical ego most politicians have. In the midterms, he realized that his poor favorability meant that it would be better for certain candidates to distance themselves from him and stress that they weren’t afraid to vote against the “party line” if they disagreed with a particular policy. Mark Kelly did this as well Raphael Warnock and Tim Ryan (though sadly not quite as successfully).
When Fetterman was campaigning in Pennsylvania, Biden joined him at the rally in Philadelphia (more urban and diverse with a lot more Hilary/Biden voters) but he sent Obama to the rally in Pittsburgh (a traditional steel town with a lot more Trump/Biden voters).
Unlike Trump, Biden doesn’t need people to fawn over him or say he’s perfect. Maybe this hurts his favorability ratings at times, but I think that’s OK and to be expected when you have a big tent coalition. Republican voters are much more homogeneous than Democrats. If big tent coalitions focus too much on a single “message” or don’t take the time to understand and speak to different voter concerns and discuss those, then the coalition falls apart.
The only consistent and common message we should have is that we’re pro-America, pro-freedom and pro-democracy. If you think these things are important, you should join us. Welcome.
I came here to say the exact same thing. I'm very disappointed. He sounded like a lot of the "bothsidesism" writers for MSM that we at Hopium are always trying to refute.
Have you seen this post from Lucian Truscott? I thought he made some great points about discounting the surface stuff and paying attention to the fundamentals.
https://open.substack.com/pub/luciantruscott/p/vote-for-the-stutterer-not-the-lying?r=1aiy5t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Hopium member James Parks just posted this on another post here at Hopium:
Donated to Tom and am proud I did after watching the debate and really getting a clear look at the insanity of his opponent! Go Team Suozzi! The difference between what the Dems are offering and what MAGA is offering could not be more stark and I feel thankful I'm on this side. Jill Biden's note was just perfect and emblematic of they are as people and why I voted for Jos Biden to begin with. Kindness. Grace. Empathy. Dignity and Quiet strength. Thank you Hopium! VOE BLUE
I love "quiet strength." That describes it perfectly and that is what gets my vote.
I posted my reply to Amy's message before you posted yours. Don't worry, I wasn't trying to bash how Tom runs his campaign. Just express my disappointment with the wide-spread bothsidesism and the apparent need for it.
I just watched Suozzi’s interview on Morning Joe. Same thing there: no mention of President Biden’s stellar economic accomplishments and post-pandemic recovery, which are the envy of the world! Moreover, Suozzi uttered not a single word about the Senate bipartisan Border-Ukraine-Israel-FarEast deal – nor that Trump and House Democrats are obstructing and sabotaging it.
Yes, Suozzi is far better than Pilip, but I intensely dislike the bothsiderism he expressed on Morning Joe. This is NOT how we build the Democratic brand and generate enthusiasm for it!
Exactly! Going on offense means taking the megaphone and bragging about the Biden economic record that few in the media will spotlight - AND praising all the bipartisan legislation Biden has signed into law in the last 3 years (when no one said bipartisan could happen). It's also pointing out that Biden supports and would sign into law the bipartisan border deal negotiated in the Senate. I'd love to see all members in the Democratic caucus go on offense, loud and proud to support our amazing President and his steady, experienced, extraordinary leadership!!!
Agreed Amy–he also relied heavily on MAGA Repub talking points on ‘closed border’ and ‘build the wall’ rather than lifting up our country’s long-standing democratic values of providing opportunity for people who move themselves and their families for a better life, whether they are fleeing persecution for their beliefs or trying to survive economically.
America is a great nation because unlike so many other places we welcome the best, brightest with opportunity and our strength is in the rich diversity of experiences, perspectives, and minds working on the important problems we face.
E Pluribus Unum.
Immigration is an asset that we need to better manage and leverage.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-economy-prediction-immigration-population-growth-housing-market-gdp-cbo-2024-2?amp
We do a disservice to ourselves, our history and our future when promote MAGA propaganda that scapegoats and demonizes people making the ultimate sacrifice of leaving their home, their families, friends and language behind to move to a new place.
I spent some time fishing LI Sound this past fall. It was City Island, right across from this district; The guys who own the boats were distinctly anti-Biden and complaining about the economy ( even though they were carrying customers on a weekday during the school year and it's all retirees at that point ). The customers OTOH, were mostly POCs retired from city jobs and schools. All were disgusted by trump. I don't know who lived where ( I'm sure the captains don't live in the city, and probably the retirees don't either; I drove in from NJ ). But there were more customers than captains, and the crews were also anti-trump ( that's a difference from NJ ) so do we outnumber them? Without polling the customers to see where they lived, who knows. A trip to New Rochelle, also very close, revealed similar opinions. But that was Veteran's Day and featured a lot of state workers and teachers who were off, and kids too. A big enough turnout that the captain had to carry an additional crew member ( bad economy? These trips are a hundred bucks, a dad and two kids...) So, like a lot of places, there are different people you have to appeal to in this area. In these cases, you are fighting for the people who really dislike politics and hate both sides. I think that might favor Tom here, after the Santos disaster. Also, there's gonna be more snow tomorrow than expected.....whichever party votes more on Election Day, might be the one losing voters. Or will indies show up in the snow? It won't be a huge storm, and should be outta here by noon, but it looks to be the biggest in a few years, potentially.
Yeah, we need to push on this (maybe after 2024). I don’t think this - pox on both your houses - approach works as he - in this case - is a Democrat and he’s better off just tarnishing the Rs and not himself but he’s an old school pol who thinks he can win the middle this way. It’s NYT/inside the beltway/No labels BS that is designed to appeal to political reporters and not voters. But, we don’t have time now to address this. We just need to get him elected!
I agree. I’ve given to the Suozzi campaign 3 times and I do not live in New York. If Democrats can’t state the facts that the Republican Party is currently an extremist obstructionist party who will? The media certainly won’t.
It’s getting so discouraging to see how the mainstream media seems to be running the 2016 playbook again- trying to make it a horse race between the candidates by deliberately going after the Dem candidate while ignoring the clear threat posed by Trump.
I really try not to lose hope, but even after the election, if we win- what do we do about this??
Marina Hyde, columnist in The Guardian, mockingly expressed this well the other day. Worth a read. Her headline said it all:
"Trump is too old and incited a coup. Biden is too old and mixes up names. America, how to choose?"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/09/donald-trump-joe-biden-america-us-president-6-january
As Robert Hubbell has written, it’s time to go on the offensive and stay on the offensive. Hit them where it hurts. Many people are letting NYT know that it can’t claim to be independent anymore if it’s serving up GOP talking points and lies as if they were truth. Jamison Foser’s substack also has more on why it’s good to go on the offensive against the media because, he writes, we can make pro-Democratic Party arguments at the same time.
And support good media! Send your subscription dollars to Simon, other substackers, ProPublica, your local journalists. They need the money more than the Times does.
I don’t know where the best place is to discuss this, but there is a VERY coordinated (to me) campaign happening on TikTok regarding Palestine. Every post about the Super Bowl by NFL, ESPN, the Chiefs, the 49ers (basically the big accounts)- the comment section is 95% posts about Palestine. It’s definitely coordinated, a lot of the accounts look like bots, the phrasing of the comments are identical, but the scope of it is startling. It’s thousands of posts on big accounts, and it feels…nefarious. Like a coordinated campaign to get young people mad at the Biden administration.
this is foreign nation state stuff. The volume you are seeing can only be from foreign nation state. I felt the same thing the weekend of October 7th itself. The scale of the attacks on me were unprecedented, as if someone knew these attacks were coming and were ready to go after, hard, anyone showing sympathy to Israel. The obvious nation that could be behind this is Iran, though it could be russia too
It feels VERY foreign interference- a lot of the repeated comments have incorrect grammar, for instance.
Foreign interference in our elections is a continuing problem, our media is not even close to being up to the task, and democracy is under attack from all quarters.
I believe Biden will win in 2024, but I’m scared for what comes next because this problem isn’t going away.
Ctkat1, on a related note: I am an avid reader and occasional commenter on "The Times of Israel". There I notice a very different organized campaign. Whenever President Biden is mentioned or is tangentially relevant to an article, there is a flood of anti-Biden / pro-Trump comments.
Sure, some of these are real and sincere. But what is striking is how many of the most vile comments are from posters who have almost no history, often at most a handful of comments. This has convinced me that this, too, is a campaign – combining real people and bots.
Is there a way to report these comments? I have a WaPo subscription and I will report when a commenter posts the same message dozens of times within the same article or is way out of line. In addition, when someone engages with one of these likely bots, I reply to their message telling them "not to feed the trolls" and often point out when the account was opened recently. Then I explain how they can ignore the troll/bot.
There is and I have, but usually I reserve that for when someone is voicing very extreme positions, promoting violence, promoting conspiracy theories, or posting a collection of blatant falsehoods.
Regretfully, there are also discussion threads that are so saturated with insincere negative posts that I simply choose not to engage.
I'm surprised no one has been using the word "traitor" to describe Trump, especially after his recent NATO warnings. Clearly Trump serves Putin not US.
Encouraging updated early-vote numbers from Tom Bonier of TargetSmart (posted 16 hours ago):
NY3 Special Early Vote Update:
Early in person (EV) - 48,365 votes, +11D party reg
Mail vote (AV) - 12,694 votes, +29 D
My note: That is at least 61,000 votes cast! When Santos won in 2022, the vote total was 271,228.
+7.8D EV, +26D AV in ‘22
Bad weather is just one more reason to vote as soon as you can, every time.
The weather will be bad. Just how bad remains a question. But the storm should exit quickly.
And unlike where I live they actually have more than three snow plows for the entire city. :-)
Streets are already being pretreated here in NJ. Got a couple guys from the Bronx replacing a windshield for me right now; turned on the defroster during the last snow storm. Bad idea. Never lost one like that before.
I appreciate the positive posts because the negativity is so thick you could cut it with a knife. I also appreciate you reminding us that the Democratic Party is strong with good leadership going forward. That helps. It truly does. I still do not understand why Trump was not prosecuted a long time ago, but I'm not going to go down any conspiracy theory rabbit holes. There is so much noise going on right now it is sometimes difficult to keep your head from spinning. That said, my single, overarching goal is to see Trump and MAGA lose big time.
I thought you would enjoy this writeup of how Tom Suozzi and his campaign embraced and coordinated with grassroots organizations:
https://open.substack.com/pub/grassrootsconnector/p/the-tom-suozzi-campaign-5e9?r=1aiy5t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Thanks for sharing this. What an interesting read!
My own take on Tom’s Morning Joe hit, after watching it a couple times is this:
He’s relying on a national information campaign contrasting the the D & R brands that is already underway on the air and social media communicating that Rs are controlled by a dangerous authoritarian movement that will lead to constraints on our individual freedoms and bring severe American decline. That and our new enormous grassroots led field operations are pushing our base turnout to its highest capacity in many decades.
I think his earned media comments that feel gratuitously “both sidesy” are really just an effort to improve the persuasion factor among the least informed voters in his district who still turn out to the polls due to socialization. I view it less as an attack on the Democratic Party and more of a attack on “extremism”, which is a central argument we will be making all the way up and down the ballot all over the country all year long. I think it’s a pretty smart comm strategy there, because there’s already a sense among pretty much every D leaning and truly persuadable voter baked into the cake that Trump is an extremist….so running against extremism is going to be a very effective strategy for every D at every level this year. Tactically, it will be more advantageous in some jurisdictions to run against extremism in general, and in others it will be more effective to run against extremism of Rs specifically….but it all adds up to campaigns FOR reasonable behavior and good faith efforts to deliver progress to the American people and AGAINST the dangers and regressiveness of extremism….and if that is the basic metric of the election, we will win the base voter battle, the turnout battle, AND the persuasion battle.
So, in summary, I don’t think that kind of rhetoric in certain competitive districts and states hurts our party brand much, because I think the message that emerges from it is an indictment of extremism, rather than “pox on both sides”….and the Rs are in hand cuffs and straight jackets this year in any attempts they might make to portray themselves as “not extreme” with Trump as their standard bearer, and his demands of absolute loyalty and fealty to him in their discourse and behavior.
As for snow, 2 points: 1) you never know how this will impact turnout 2) GOP is more reliant on election day voters than we are so in theory this is more dangerous for them than for us but we will find out tomorrow! Just keep working hard all - S
Do more, worry less is my mantra now
Simon I am deeply disappointed in the tempest in a teapot treatment of Biden's age while he is running against a rapist criminal who attempted to overturn a free and fair election. I'm curious about what you're hearing from journalists behind the scenes as they attempt to explain and justify their terrible behavior.
Journalists write the articles – but it is the editors and the desk who choose the headlines, which articles to emphasize, which stories to place on the front page above the fold or have as lead articles on the evening news.
A tragic development is the degree to which news has become infotainment. Increasingly, it is about clicks / number of readers / number of viewers. Why? Because this is what the advertisers care about. Thus it is what most owners/shareholders care about – and therefore these become the metrics by which "success" is measured.
Having good journalists is not enough, because the overall news coverage can still get seriously warped on the way to the reader and viewer.
Ironically, the Times is almost completely dependent on essentially us - 10 million mostly progressive subscribers for their business. They have moved to a digital subscription model. The Times editors are strangely focused on their own relevance (to those in power on the right) rather than serving their subscribers. The same crew that played a big role in getting Trump elected the first time - with the focus on HIllary’s emails, Comey - is still in charge. We need to find a way to organize the subscribers and push the paper to focus on journalism rather than this BS.
The Washington Post has also experienced a rightward slide in recent years. For this reason, my wife and I have cancelled our subscriptions to WaPo after previously ditching the Times.
These days our preferred reads are The Guardian, The American Prospect, Daniel Nichanian’s excellent Bolts Magazine, some BBC, and writers such as Heather Cox Richardson (indispensable!), Timothy Snyder, Sam Wang – and of course Simon Rosenberg!
This snow storm is starting to blow up and is looking pretty bad right now, with 8-12 being progged in much of LI. That's major no matter where you live, and who knows what it might mean. Keep in mind that such a storm has not been seen in a couple years up here. NYC schools already closed. This was not supposed to happen ( and hell it may still not ). That's mother nature.
There is a big snowstorm coming tomorrow in the New York area. I hope it doesn't affect the Democrats getting out to vote!
Looking for news about NY-3 (looks good! We just have to get out the vote) - and checked out Dave Wasserman’s twitter (not going to link to it but just go and look at his feed if curious). He’s dedicated many posts to “why I was right and not wrong” about the 2022 red wave that did not come) and cites Nate Cohn at the NYT. He and Cohn are basically arguing that the polling (and I!) are still right and that what happened is polling was - because of too many engaged Dem voters - wrong in 2022 but will be right in 2024? It just doesn’t make sense. Why would pollsters NOT be able to model the electorate that would turn out in 2022? And, if they could NOT do it in 2022, why can they do it in 2024, when the electorate will be more complex, harder to model? These guys, the NYT and others are like the fax machine industry when we moved to email, defenders of an increasingly irrelevant industry (polling industrial complex). All to say, tell your friends, ignore these dummies and vote, work, organize give and kick some more butt!
I am concerned about Biden’s weakness in the face of Israel’s rampant and indiscriminate violence in Gaza. We need to hold back aid to Israel. Many many Democrats, especially the young, are totally disillusioned by what looks to be collusion in a genocide taking place right now.