Hopium Chronicles With Simon Rosenberg Podcast

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

DNC Grassroots Call Tonight With Jaime Harrison and Hakeem Jeffries - This just in from the DNC:

This is Jaime Harrison, Chair of the Democratic National Committee. As we close out a tough year and an unprecedented election cycle, I – like many of you – am reflecting on the path that brought us here and the road ahead.

While we aren’t celebrating all of the wins we’d hoped to, it is because of the work of supporters like you that House Democrats gained two seats this election and Republicans are entering the next Congress with the smallest margin in nearly a century. And as Vice President Harris said at Howard University on November 6: now is not a time to throw up our hands, it’s a time to roll up our sleeves!

In that spirit, I want to invite you to join me tomorrow evening for a candid conversation with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the future of our party and the important work that lies ahead as we prepare to defend Americans’ rights and freedoms from the incoming Trump administration. This is an opportunity to bring the family together ahead of the holidays, dig into some of the most pressing questions facing the Democratic Party, and chart a path forward together. I hope you’ll join us.

When: Tuesday, December 10, 2024 at 8:00PM Eastern

Where: You can register for the event at the link HERE.

Grateful our Chair is putting an event like this on right now. Hope folks will join and report back here on what they learn.

Dr. Elaine Kamarck On Reinventing Government and Trump’s DOGE - I sat down yesterday with Elaine Kamarck, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, for an extended conversation about the possibilities and perils - mostly perils - of Trump’s DOGE project. Elaine ran the “Reinventing Government” project for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and is one of the country’s leading experts in government innovation and reform. You can watch our discussion above, and learn more about Elaine here. She is an old friend from Clinton days and I am excited to introduce her to the Hopium community.

Here’s my recent essay, The Opposition Party Needs A Big Reform and Renewal Agenda, that we touched on in the discussion, and here’s Elaine’s most recent piece on the dangers of DOGE.

Greg Sargent Interviews The Three Leading Candidates For DNC Chair On The “Loudness Gap” - In a terrific new New Republic piece Greg Sargent interviews the three leading candidates for DNC Chair - Ken Martin, Martin O’Malley and Ben Wikler - about how to make our broad center-left coalition more competitive in the information space. It’s well worth your time. Greg references my recent essay, More Thoughts on Modernizing Our Comms And Getting Louder, and echoes core sentiments familiar to Hopium readers:

Democrats must treat the current state of the information ecosystem as a matter of urgency. The ideas offered by these candidates for DNC chair suggest this process has begun. It can’t be allowed to drop. A key test for any aspiring chair should be whether each is offering a comprehensive agenda illustrating a deep understanding of the information gap—and what to do about it.

On Friday my talk to the Democratic State Chairs in Phoenix was largely about this topic - the urgent need to reinvent our comms and becoming far more competitive in the information space. You can go deeper into this important conversation by checking out my new post and video, For Dems It’s Time For Re-imagination, Re-invention and Innovation, and by watching my recent interview with Ken Martin, one of the leading candidates for DNC Chair.

Fighting The Unacceptable 4 - 75 Nobel Laureates Come Out Against Kennedy - From The NYT today:

More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed a letter urging senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

The letter, obtained by The New York Times, marks the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice, according to Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine, who helped draft the letter. The group tries to stay out of politics whenever possible, he said.

But the confirmation of Mr. Kennedy, a staunch critic of mainstream medicine who has been hostile to the scientists and agencies he would oversee, is a threat that the Nobel laureates could not ignore, Dr. Roberts said.

“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he said. “You have to stand up and protect it.”

…..

The laureates questioned whether Mr. Kennedy, who they said has “a lack of credentials” in medicine, science or administration, was fit to lead the department responsible for protecting public health and funding biomedical research.

“Placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of DHHS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences,” the letter warned.

…..

The laureates decried Mr. Kennedy’s promotion of conspiracy theories. Mr. Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism, rejected established science showing that H.I.V. causes AIDS, and suggested, without evidence, that the coronavirus targeted and spared certain ethnic groups.

The laureates also noted that Mr. Kennedy has been a “belligerent critic” of the agencies that would fall under his purview, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. Kennedy has threatened to fire employees of the F.D.A., which he says has waged a “war on public health,” and has promised to replace hundreds of N.I.H. employees the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

More broadly, he said that vaccine scientists “should be in jail and the key should be thrown away,” according to NBC News.

“The leader of DHHS should continue to nurture and improve — not to threaten — these important and highly respected institutions and their employees,” the letter said.

Searing, powerful, necessary stuff from some of America’s most important scientists.

As I wrote yesterday the fall of Assad will make it harder for Trump to get his unacceptable 4 - Hegseth, Gabbard, Patel and Kennedy - confirmed. The world has just grown far more complicated, making these unqualified and unfit nominees even more of an an unacceptable risk. Putin has stumbled, badly - again - and alliance with him may be far less appealing for Republicans going forward. May being a key word here, and why we have 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. Last week 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.

In his first major interview since the election (yes Trump has been largely out of public view for a month), Trump looked terrible and sounded just as batshit crazy as he did during the campaign. Here’s the lead graph from CNN’s article about the interview:

President-elect Donald Trump in a television interview that aired Sunday previewed a sweeping agenda for his first days in office, outlining how his administration will prioritize deporting migrants with criminal records, vowing to pursue pardons for January 6 defendants on his first day, and raising the possibility that former Rep. Liz Cheney and other political opponents could face jail time.

Here’s a clip from the interview where he denies that his broad tariffs will raise prices on consumers. His rationale, it appears, is that he did raise tariffs (at a far smaller scale than he is proposing) in his first term and the economy grew and inflation stayed low. It’s deeply delusional stuff:

One of the most important dynamics of this new Trump era will be how the false stories, inventions, conspiracy theories and tornado of b******t they threw at the electorate in 2024, pumped up by their right wing noise machine, crash into reality in the coming months. This is a central theme of my discussion with Dr. Kamarck; of the 75 Nobel laureates letter; and in Greg Sargent’s article too.

As Joe Biden will remind us today in a major speech, the next President is being handed an economy and country in very good shape; the Russian-Iranian axis is severely degraded, and the Western alliance revitalized; there is huge, unprecedented momentum in countering climate change, etc. There will be no excuses, no scapegoats, no blaming “them” for President Trump in his new term. He has to govern now, make things better - as we always do. The performative part of the job, the part he loves, will soon give way to the hard realities of governing. Regardless of what he says, or “believes,” tariffs will spur inflation; mass deportation will do so too, and hurt American businesses; large cuts in government programs are far more likely to harm red states and districts more dependent on government support than wealthier, Democratic areas; creating vaccine hesitancy will cause kids to die, public education to be undermined; killing the ACA will disproportionately harm Latino voters so important to the new coalition Trump is trying to forge; Putin is a sworn enemy of the US, not an ally. The list of potential harms to all of us goes on and on…..

Note this new Trumpian madness, delusion - in his public commentary he continues to refer to Canada as an American state, and Prime Minister Trudeau as the “Governor” of Canada.

The central and most consequential untruth Trump is peddling now is that his 4 unacceptable and unfit nominees should serve in America’s government. One of these early unacceptable nominees - a rapist - already crashed into reality and fell. We need to keep working together to force this central Trumpian delusion - that these ridiculous people he’s put forward should serve - to keep crashing into the reality that they are all unfit and dangerous, and must be defeated, for the good of the country. We need to keep working it everyone.

What Happened, What Comes Next - To help make sense of what happened in the 2024 election and where we go from here I’ve launched a new video discussion series to bring outside voices and experts into our conversation here, one that starts with many more question than answers. Here are the first five of those talks:

* 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!

I’m also sharing two relevant segments from my fall Closing Strong series with Tara McGowan and COURIER Newsroom:

* 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

And my two comprehensive post-election videos and analyses:

* For Dems It’s A Time For Re-imagination, Re-invention and Innovation

* More Notes On What Happened And What Comes Next

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!

We end today with a timely message from Dr. King from a photo I took this past Spring at his inspiring memorial in Washington:

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon