Good afternoon everyone. I’ve shared two posts about this historic election so far (here, here). This is a third. And like the others it is a bit of early rough draft.
I saw this post from Steve Rattner this morning:
And it got me thinking about how much power Democrats have been given by the American people all across the country through this historic, transformative election. So I went on-line and started researching what happened downballot across the US, for we all know what has happened with the House and Senate - our best mid-term election since the post-Watergate election in 1974. And what I found is remarkable - we now control a majority of governships, a majority of state legislative chambers, and won statewide offices like Attorney General and Secretary of State all over the country. There has been an enormous shift in power in America. We have much more, and Republicans and MAGA have much less. Taking as much power away from MAGA as possible has been a central goal since we launched Hopium three and a half years ago. And last night man oh man did we take a lot of power away from MAGA all across the country.
But I think something even more profound is happening that I am going to try to articulate now - people here and around the world are figuring out that this Trump/Putin/Elon/MAGA thing is deeply rotten, repressive, illiberal, and just bad news. Trump and his allies have lost critical elections in recent months in Hungary, Brasil, Serbia, Israel, and now here. In states here in the US with MAGA-like corrupt Republican regimes that have failed their people - GA, IA, NC, OH, TX, WI - there was an explosive Hungary-like tossing out of the repressive yoke last night. Republicans in these states didn’t just lose, regimes and the remnants of regimes were toppled. It almost, almost happened in Florida too.
Republicans didn’t just lose last night - repressive, corrupt MAGA regimes were overthrown in Washington and throughout the country. There was a clear rejection of corrupt, pro-elite, pro-oligarchical politics, a politics of abandonment and betrayal; and Democrats have been given a very clear mandate from Washington to Juneau to now govern for the many and not the few.
The proliferation of this kind of repressive, corrupt politics is something that our next Lt. Governor of Ohio, David Pepper, documented in a recent book for it is not just Trump. It was a whole approach to politics adopted by leading Republicans form Scott Walker to Greg Abbott to Mike Dewine.
Here is that data from the Exit Polls that we discussed yesterday. Our success was last night across the country was not only about affordability, it was also about building a better and more representative politics, a politics of freedom and democracy not illiberalism:
Trump clearly did not get the message as this is literally what he is doing right now, exploring the Imperial palace he is building with stolen tax-payer dollars:
Nor did JD Vance get the memo and hear the clear call from the American people. Here is a remarkable Tweet he posted today where he blames the war for their loss, not corruption, oligarchy, the big ugly bill, the tariffs, the ballroom, Elon….
I’m sharing it in full for it is a truly astonishing and deeply delusional analysis:
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
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End the war
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Focus on cost of living/inflation
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Put America First
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Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Memo three. More to come. Congrats everyone. Stay grounded in the joy, elation, and hope we all feel today, for we have done a lot of good together these past few years and should savor it all - Simon
