Friends, greetings from Washington, DC where it is a beautiful fall morning - great for all the canvassers doing their thing in Virginia today!
Our “Winning Virginia” campaign is off to a great start, as hundreds of you have helped raise $50,000 through my new ActBlue page and direct contributions to our six targeted races. Thank you all - the response from the Hopium community has far exceeded my expectations and is so great to see. Look at this nice shout out we got yesterday from one of the six, Michael Feegans:
Let’s win Virginia, together. I know so many of you have been working it for weeks now - thank you!. For others, please donate, volunteer and if you live in Virginia, vote this weekend. Early voting allows our campaigns to target lower propensity voters, increases Dem turnout and helps us win. #VADemsVoteEarly. We can do this people!
Upcoming Hopium Events (here for the full schedule)
Thurs, Oct 26th, 7pm EST - Monthly Get Together with Hopium Chronicles Paid Subscribers. Paid Subscribers can RSVP here.
Grassroots Events I’m Speaking To This Week
Tue, October 24th, 830pm EST - Simon joins California Indivisibles For “A Hope-Filled Political Update” - Learn More, RSVP
Wed, October 25th, 9pm EST - Blue CD2 New Mexico - Simon joins Reed Galen and Field Team 6 - Learn More, Donate/RSVP
With Democrats, Things Get Better
One of the things the Hopium community has access to each month is a newly updated 30-minute presentation, With Democrats, Things Get Better. This current presentation is a descendant of a much simpler, earlier deck I built in 2017 called “Patriotism and Optimism: Rejecting Trump’s Poisonous Pessimism.” Each month, over the past six years, I’ve sat down with the slides and the arguments, kick ‘em around a bit, and refine and update the presentation as I find new data, update old data and respond to developments in the real world.
I find the process of building With Dems each month really important to my own thinking, as it forces me to spend time with lots of data and the greatness of our country and our party. What this means is every time I present With Dems it’s new and fresh, full of new slides and new insights. It’s perhaps the most important single thing I’ve ever produced, and is in many ways the foundational work of Hopium Chronicles.
You can find the October, 2023 With Dems above, recorded on Thursday, October 19th. If you want to stick around after the presentation ends we had a great discussion. To dive a bit deeper here are a few helpful things:
Background on With Dems - Some history, lots of links
The Case For Optimism: Rejecting Trump’s Poisonous Pessimism - The essay that started me on this Hopium journey
A Smokin’ Jobs Report - With Dems graphs and data in action
So in the coming days hope you catch this new recording, spend time with the data and the big arguments, and share your insights here. I’ve opened the comments for so everyone in the Hopium community can weigh in.
As I say at the end of With Dems we are part of what is almost certainly the most consequential political organization in human history, the Democratic Party of the United States of America. It’s possible no political force has ever done more good for more people than our party, as imperfect and as complicated as it is. In this time of rising global uncertainty and danger, come spend 30 minutes connecting with the greatness and goodness of America and our deeply inspiring and consequential party. With Dems will left your spirits, provide new understandings and give you a bit more energy to go out and do the work we need to together in the days ahead.
Keep working hard all - Simon
With Democrats, Things Get Better - October, 2023