Hopium Chronicles With Simon Rosenberg Podcast

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

North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton Reports In On Our Important Wins in The Tar Heel State - Excited to share with you a video, above, of the conversation I had this morning with the great Anderson Clayton. North Carolina is turning out to be one of our real 2024 bright spots. It is also the place where this community invested most heavily, raising more than $1.1m in over 10,000 individual contributions. As we discuss, it was always my belief with Mark Robinson, an extremist, at the top of the ticket more was possible for us this year in North Carolina. And with Anderson at the helm it was.

Enjoy this wonderful discussion and thank you all for being part of this plucky community of proud patriots and info warriors. While we had a disappointing election we had important wins in places where we made big investments - in North Carolina, in Nebraska, with Ruben Gallego and in the 5 of the 6 US House seats that have flipped blue this year.

Fighting The Outrageous 4 - Still asking folks to call their Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with Trump’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz 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. We should be demanding that our party leaders do everything they can to block them, and build a national campaign to encourage other Americans to join us. We may not win, but we can grow our networks and power, perhaps weaken Trump for what I think were serious mistakes, and not let such outrageous actions go unchallenged. While weary, heartbroken and desperately in need of rest, we still have to fight everyone. Do what you can. I’m going to keep fighting.

Our Event Today At 1pm ET Is Now An Open Discussion About The Election, What Comes Next - Friends, I am turning our event today into a post-election discussion. Please register here. I will open it up with some of latest thinking about what happened and what comes next and then open it for questions. For those who cannot make it live the talk shared here on Hopium tomorrow. See folks soon!

Thank you Hopium World! - A few more photos from our great Hopium/Grassroots Dems HQ thank you event last Friday. Note that we were joined by Robert Hubbell and John “Bowzer” Bauman and many others. It was a wonderful night and it felt great to be with folks in person and celebrate our important work, together. Thank you to Tamara Levinson and the whole GDHQ team for leaving it all out there on the playing field this cycle!

What Happened, What Comes Next - My intention is to help lead a robust public conversation about what happened in 2024 and where we go from here by showcasing leading thinkers, Elected Officials, operatives and innovators in video discussions over the coming months. There is no reason to rush to judgement. As a family I need to think we need to take it slow, be smart and respectful, and do a lot of listening and learning, together.

We now have a few of these talks on the books, including today’s discussion with Anderson Clayton, and:

* John Della Volpe On The Youth Vote

* Joe Trippi On The Power Of Networks

* On The Need For Pro-Democracy Media With Tara McGowan and Dan Pfeiffer (part of our Closing Strong series)

While I am still working on my big, comprehensive take on the 2024 election, and today still have far more questions than answers, here are some initial thoughts on what happened this year (updated daily):

2024 was a close election. Trump will not reach 50% of the national vote and his final margin will be give or take 1.5 points. In the battlegrounds it will be 0.9 points in WI, 1.4 in MI, 1.9 in PA and 2.2 in GA. A shift of 1.9 points in MI, PA, WI - a switch of one vote in a hundred - and Harris wins. 2024 was not a landslide, not a blowout. It was a close election, aided by illicit interventions by the Supreme Court and Judge Cannon which kept Trump’s trials for his disqualifying, serial betrayals of the country from coming before voters this year.

The Senate today is at 52-48 (PA is still counting) and Rs will have at most a 3 seat advantage in the House, making the chamber once again challenging to manage for a factious party. While Harris lost the 7 battleground states, we had important down ballot wins, including AZ, MI, NV, WI Senate and NC Governor. We had other important wins across the US, won the blue dot again in Nebraska and in the state where the Hopium community invested the most money, North Carolina, we won elections for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Supreme Court, NC-01 and we broke the GOP’s state legislative supermajority.

Kamala Harris was given a very tough assignment. To come into and win the race starting three points down in late July was no easy thing. I think she then put in one of the greatest political performances we’ve seen in the modern era of American politics, taking the baton from President Biden, uniting the party around her, making a great VP pick, putting on the best and most inspiring Convention in my lifetime, crafting a powerful narrative and story for her campaign, kicking Trump’s blubbering ass in their only debate and then campaigning with a level of intensity and power we’ve seldom seen. There can be no question that she left it all out there on the playing field for us this year.

Despite all this, and despite him being a rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon there was a 5.8 point shift in the national popular vote towards Trump this cycle, and Trump is on track to be only the second Republican to win the national popular vote since 1988. Our underperformance with Hispanic voters and young people this year was a grave blow to the coalition that got us on average 51% of the vote over the past 4 Presidential election. It is an urgent priority to figure out what went wrong with these two groups, and to come with up with a party wide plan to regain lost ground. We also need a big discussion on why late deciders broke towards Trump, despite our closing ground and paid media advantage.

I also think we need a very big conversation on why the threat of MAGA, which drove our elections in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 failed to do so in 2024 - particularly when it was a far more dangerous and extreme iteration of MAGA than any of its previous manifestations. Significant focus will need to be on why the Harris SuperPAC, Future Forward, armed with an unprecedented budget of $700m, was unable to make the historical ugliness of Trump and MAGA material enough to voters who had repeatedly rejected it in these previous elections. There was perhaps nothing more “baked into the cake” in 2024 than voters’ deep understanding something had gone wrong with the Republican Party in recent years.

If we had successfully disqualified Trump, as many campaigns have been able to do to their MAGA opponents with far less money and far less ugliness to work with, it is far less likely late deciders would have broken to Trump and handed him the election. From the Exit Polls:

While there were bright spots for us in the 2024 election, particularly in the battleground states, this was a very bad election for our party, our freedoms, our democracy and our future and there is a lot of important work ahead of us.

What leaves me most optimistic about what comes next is the strength of our rising generation of political leaders and of our party itself. Through extraordinary efforts we forestalled a red wave in each of the last two elections, and should be proud of everything we did, together.

Here is where our 15 endorsed House candidates today:

* Flips (4) - Whitesides (CA-27), Gillen NY-4, Riley NY-19, Bynum OR-5

* Too Close To Call/Still Counting (3) - Gray CA-13, Tran CA-45, Bohannan IA-1

* Losses (8) - Shah AZ-01, Engel AZ-06, Salas CA-22, Rollins CA-41, Vargas NE-02, Jones NY-17, Altman NJ-07, Stelson PA-10

While the House officially went to the Rs last Wednesday, I remain very proud of the good we’ve done, together, this cycle. We made deeply strategic investments and got important wins in a tough year in AZ, NC, NE, WI and critical House races across the country. Of the 6 House seats Dems flipped this cycle, our community aggressively backed 5 of them - George Whitesides CA-27, Tom Suozzi NY-3, Laura Gillen NY-4, Josh Riley NY-19 and Janelle Bynum OR-5.

Ballot curing opportunities for Gray and Tran with Grassroots Democrats HQ -

Virtual Ballot Curing In California

CA-13 Adam Gray Ballot Curing Phone Bank

CA-45 Derek Tran Ballot Curing Phone Bank

CA-45 Derek Tran Recruitment Phone Bank

In-Person Ballot Curing In California

CA-13 Adam Gray Ballot Curing Canvass

CA-45 Derek Tran Ballot Curing Canvass in Placentia

Post-Election Pods, Posts and Videos - I got together with Tara McGowan and David Rothkopf last Thursday for one of our Deep State Radio discussions about US politics. This is the first of what will be many discussions I will be participating in about what happened and where we go from here.

A few more things to chew if you haven’t gotten to them yet:

* My big thank yous to members of the Hopium community who left it all out there on the playing field this cycle - post and video

* I’ve offered a series of post-election posts on the need for us to get louder (here, here, and here), something we also discussed in my recent Closing Strong conversation with Dan Pfeiffer and Tara McGowan, and in my talk with Joe Trippi from Wednesday

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