Hopium Chronicles With Simon Rosenberg Podcast

Good morning all. Got a few things for you today:

For Dems It’s A Time For Re-Imagination, Re-Invention And Innovation - My New Video On The Path Forward - Last night in a presentation to Hopium paid subscribers I offered up my latest thinking - all still very much a work in progress - on the election and our path forward together. You can find it above. What is sitting with me most this morning is how much this moment is an opportunity for us to re-invent and re-imagine our politics; to keep pushing the generational wheel forward, allowing new thinking, new leaders, new voices, new organizations and new strategies/tactics to emerge, be aired out and debated, vigorously; to encourage - and reward - creativity, entrepreneurship and risk-taking. With the era of the Clintons, Biden, Pelosi and the boomers behind us, it is time for a new very capable generation to lead us forward to the next - and better - thing.

This moment feels a bit like 2004-2005 to me. 2004 was the last time a Republican Presidential candidate won the national popular vote, and Rs entered 2005 with control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency. The period from 2004 to 2008 was one of great innovation in our family, with new organizations built - America Votes, Media Matters, Center For American Progress, a refashioned NDN, the Democracy Alliance; a new majority coalition involving Hispanics and Millennials imagined; new leaders - Obama, Biden, Nancy Pelosi - emerge; and new tools - the people powered Internet, targeted cable ads, mobile phones - to reach voters get incorporated into our Democratic arsenal.

In 2006 both chambers flipped back to Democrats, and we won the Presidency in 2008 by our biggest margin, 53%, since 1964. So though we were down at this point in 2004, very down, we came roaring back in the next two elections and built our most powerful electoral majority since FDR.

In my talk I offered some thoughts on things we need to do together in the coming years (all still very much an early sketch of what comes next). Some highlights:

* It Was A Very Close Election, and We Had Important Wins - Trump will end up winning by 1.5 points and fail to reach 50%. A bit more than 100,000 votes changing in MI, PA, WI and Harris wins. We picked up a seat in the House and were less than 4,000 votes from making Hakeem Jeffries Speaker. We had important downballot wins in AZ, NC, MI, NV, PA, WI. While we have work to do this was a narrow win not a landslide, and our road back is not insurmountable. I go deeper on all this here.

* Finding More Voters, Forging A New Majority - The dramatic gains Trump made with Hispanics and young people (particularly young men) unraveled the coalition that had gotten us 51% of the vote on average over the last four Presidential elections. We will need to imagine and build a new majority coalition now and need a concerted party wide effort to make gains with voters of all kinds - working class, rural, Hispanic, young men, etc.

* Getting On The Right Side Of Opportunity/Winning The Big Economic Argument - As I wrote the other day, we need a deep and long conversation about how we can win the big economic argument with MAGA in the coming years.. 3 consecutive Dem Presidents have left the country far better than we found it. 3 consecutive GOP Presidents have been economic and societal wrecking balls. We should not be losing the economic argument to these guys, or losing ground with working class voters given our economic track record. There needs to be urgency about finding a better path here, and it is very possible that Trump’s dangerous economic plans - tariffs, mass deportation, huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans, spending cuts for everyone else - will give us a big opportunity to make our case very soon.

* Getting Louder/Building A 24/7/365 Politics - This is a familiar topic for Hopium readers, but there is real urgency here too. For background see my post-election posts on the need for us to get louder here, here, here and most recently this one on how we need to get far smarter in how we strategically contest the right’s information superiority in our campaigns themselves. I am going to be talking a lot about the need to see the millions of people supporting our campaigns as “partners in the fight, not donors to the cause” and help unlock not just the financial or volunteer potential of our family but also its capacity to become information warriors and amplify.

* Advancing A New Reform and Renewal Agenda - In a recent post I discussed the need for Democrats to develop a broad agenda for renewal and reform, a topic we’ve been discussing here for many months and one central to my February New Republic essay, Biden Must Reinvent What A Presidential Campaign Is. In this period of opposition we must not only oppose, but must also propose.

* While Focusing On Kitchen Table Issues, We Cannot Leave Behind The Harris-Walz Campaign’s Powerful Embrace of Freedom and Patriotism - We can both be focused on improving the lives of everyday Americans and lean hard into the powerful love of country themes the Vice President advanced during her campaign. This is particularly true in the fights for our personal freedoms and rights of all kinds including reproductive freedom.

Friends, these next few years are going to be hard. There is no doubt. But we’ve already seen Trump misread his “mandate” and overreach, stumble; their “majority” in the House will be very challenging (congrats on 215 all); and while we lost an election we did not think we were going to lose, good things happened in November too. Most of all, I am excited about entering a period of innovation, re-imagination and building. Times out of power can be powerful periods of renewal for a political party. Let’s encourage our leaders to approach this new day with a spirit of experimentation, pride, and confidence that together we can build a successful next thing and finally put MAGA into the dustbin of history where it belongs. Paid subscribers should weigh in on all this in our chat, below - look forward to hearing from you!

Fighting Trump’s Unacceptable 4 - The battle goes on. Here’s Semafor this morning with the title of “Chaos agent:”

Donald Trump’s transition started off relatively orderly and low-drama — a stark contrast to 2016. But chaos is beginning to descend on Washington: Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary pick, is facing allegations about his personal life and workplace record; a lower-ranked nominee withdrew Tuesday night (Trump says he pushed him out); Republicans are clashing over how to structure their legislative agenda; and there are still questions about how confirmable Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the transition’s delay in making a vetting deal with the Justice Department has put the incoming administration “a little bit behind.” Trump’s orbit is divided on the state of affairs: One person close to the transition maintained the “curveballs” they’re experiencing are “just par for the course.” A second person, however, said phrases like “s**t show” and “dumpster fire” have been used to describe the process in recent weeks.

I like “rollicking shitshow” but will take dumpster fire and just plain ole shitshow. We need to keep working it peeps:

* Call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not.

* Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately and before Trump installs Patel to disable the process. On Tuesday the Trump team signed an agreement allowing these background checks to go forward. President Biden should do Mr. Trump a favor and expedite the clearance process for the most sensitive jobs of State, Defense, DNI, CIA, Homeland Security and HHS (pandemic preparedness) so the new team can hit the ground running in January.

More On 2024 and What Comes Next - To help us learn from others throughout the family, I’ve launched a new What Happened, What Comes Next discussion series. Here are the first five of those talks, along with 2 relevant segments from my fall Closing Strong series with Tara McGowan and COURIER Newsroom:

* Ken Martin - MN Dem Chair, A Leading Candidate For DNC Chair On The Future Of The DNC And Democratic Party

* Anderson Clayton - On Our Impressive Downballot Wins in North Carolina

* John Della Volpe - On Trump’s Gains With Young People

* Joe Trippi - On The Power Of Networks And The Need To Build Our Own

* Rep. Abigail Spanberger - On Winning The Virginia Governors Race in 2025. Learn more about Abigail | Volunteer | Donate To Her Campaign | We have already raised more than $10,000 towards our $100,000 goal!

From Closing Strong:

* On The Need For Pro-Democracy Media - With Tara McGowan and Dan Pfeiffer

* Beyond MAGA Creators - Russia’s influence on the Republican Party runs deep with Stewart Stevens and Jiore Craig

I’ve also set up a thread for paid subscribers to offer their thoughts on what this wonderful and plucky community should do next. I’m grateful for the many comments we’ve received so far. Weigh in if you can in the coming days, and note that an annual Hopium paid subscription is now 10% off through the end of the year for those who may want to sign up or give a bit of Hopium as a holiday gift.

In the spirit of this post today I send along one of my favorite quotes from Thomas Jefferson. It comes from a photo I took this spring at the Jefferson Memorial. Enjoy:

Keep working hard all. And remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope tomorrow will be better, or elections to go our way. We do the work to make it so - Simon