This is an edited transcript of Simon Rosenberg’s speech at the LD18 Democrats meeting on June 25, 2024.
Simon Rosenberg is the author of the Hopium Chronicles, a Democratic newsletter with 9,000 subscribers. A veteran political analyst, strategist and commentator, Rosenberg is a veteran of two Presidential campaigns and senior roles at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
Larry Bodine, LD18 Chair: This is a man who correctly predicted that the red wave would not happen in 2022. Instead, what we see now in 2024 is a blue wave forming. He’s the author of the Hopium Chronicles, a Democratic newsletter. He has raised $220,000 for Arizona’s U.S. Senate candidate, Ruben Gallego, and also raised $30,000 for Kirsten Engel, our congressional candidate in Congressional District 6 here in Tucson. You can catch Simon’s Act on MSNBC, C-SPAN, and CNN.
Simon Rosenberg: Larry, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. I’m really here tonight just to say thank you all. I’m going to talk a little bit about politics, but I’m here to say thank you for the good work you, Larry and this remarkable team you’ve put together.
We have a big election here. In Arizona, you have big elections every two years. This year, it’s particularly important if you look at the electoral college map.
If you’ve looked at polling in the last few weeks, Biden has gained two to three points over the previous few weeks and last few months in the FiveThirtyEight averages now. We’re ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin in the polling averages. The likely scenario is that we’re going to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as we did in 2020. We had very good elections in all three of those states in 2022, which gets us to 269 electoral college votes.
The question is, how do we get to 270? In my view, there are three places that I believe can be the tipping point. One is North Carolina, where there is a person even more extreme and crazy than Kari Lake running at the top of the ticket of the Republican Party, a guy named [Lieutenant Governor] Mark Robinson. Their entire ticket is, imagine if you had four or five Kari Lakes running up and down the ticket in North Carolina.
We have this one electoral college vote in Nebraska, the so-called blue dot, where we’re ahead in polling. We won last time, and we should win again.
Arizona success story
Then there’s Arizona. Not only do you have the important responsibility of trying to ensure that Ruben Gallego wins and that we pick up the seats in Arizona CD6 and Arizona CD1, which are important, but you could also be the state that delivers the presidency to Joe Biden.
My community has now raised about $220,00 for Ruben Gallego, another $30,000 for Kirsten Engel, and endorsed Andrei Cherny in the CD1 race. He’s an old and dear friend of mine. So, my community has raised almost $300,000 for Arizona, your three candidates that we’re backing. And this really matters.
You’re ground zero. You all know that. But you really are ground zero. The reason I’m really here and when Larry asked us, is because you guys really are the people that may be central to not only defeating the extremism that you’ve experienced in your home state, but you can be the one that delivers and make sure that we put MAGA into the dustbin of history and defeat Trump in this election. So I’m here to say thank you and to say I’m grateful for all that you’ve done and all that you will do.
Certainly, Arizona has been one of the great success stories of the Democratic Party in recent years. You guys have done remarkable things. I’m really so proud of all of you. I do want to, Larry, give a slightly different talk here than I gave earlier because I want to talk about Arizona, which is a state that I know pretty well.
Only six states have flipped from Republican to Democrat since 2004: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Georgia. In 2004, Republicans won all four of the Southwestern states, controlled five out of the eight Senate seats, and controlled 14 out of the 21 House seats.
Today, because of our investment in the Hispanic vote, the Democratic Party is waking up to the opportunities in the Southwest more broadly. In 2020, Biden won the four Southwestern states. He was the first Democrat to win them since FDR in 1940. The Republicans had five out of the eight Senate seats. Now they have zero, and we control 14 out of the 23 House seats. The success that we’ve had in the Southwest has been the most significant demographic and geographic success story of the Democratic party in the last 25 years.
Purple to Blue
I was a very early investor in the transformation that’s taking place in Arizona. It’s come faster, more completely, and more successfully than I ever could have imagined. You guys have kicked ass in Arizona big time. There’s only been really one other state in the country that has had, in recent years, the kind of transformation, and that’s Georgia. But I think you’re going to do better than Georgia this time. You’re going to take control of the state legislative chambers. You’re going to win for Joe Biden. You’re going to win for Ruben.
I’ve known Ruben Gallego for a long time. I talk to Ruben all the time. By the way, Ruben and I are friends. Ruben is not a typical politician. He is a catalyst. He makes stuff happen. He’s not a traditional politician. He’s going to bring this energy, this intensity, and this passion to the state. It’s really important for Arizona’s transformation from the state that it used to be to the state that it’s becoming.
I’m so proud of all of you, honestly, for what you’ve been able to do. You have been part of one of the great success stories of the modern Democratic party in a way that I don’t know that people really understand. Some of this is because Republicans have gone from being a party of John McCain to this other Kari Lake party. They’ve made it easy for us, but that’s not the only reason that you guys have done the work. You’ve hustled and busted your ass in challenging circumstances in a state that Barry Goldwater came from. What you’ve been able to achieve is incredible.
First of all, thank you for what you’ve done and what you’re going to do. I’m going to be with you here every step of the way and do anything I can to be supportive and helpful. Arizona is one of the states that my community is focusing on. Arizona has been the highest priority in the whole country and will continue to be so all the way through election day. Second, we’re going to win this election. We have a better candidate. We have better arguments. We have a better campaign apparatus underneath us. Biden is a good president. The country’s better off. The Democratic party is strong. We’re winning elections all across the country. We’re building the most powerful political machine that any of us have ever seen.
And what do they have? They have Trump, the ugliest political thing we’ve all ever seen, who’s a rapist, a fraudster, a traitor and a felon. He’s running a political party that looks more like a raging dumpster fire than a well-oiled political machine. We have to recognize the opportunity that you have with Kari Lake and the outrageous 1864 Supreme Court decision to really do extraordinary things this year. If we do the work, it’s there for you. The same is true around the country.
Bluing of the Southwest
We’ve won more votes nationally than the Republicans in seven out of the eight last presidential elections. That’s the best popular run of a political party in American history. In the previous four presidential elections, we’ve won 51 percent of the vote. They’ve won 46. 5 percent of the vote. That 51 percent over four elections is the best we’ve done as a party since FDR’s four elections in the 1930s and 1940s.
But what we’ve done in recent years is even more remarkable. The party in power always loses seats. We lost midterm elections. We lost special elections. We lost ground. Since Dobbs two years ago — which was really this transformative event, which through the extremism and the radicalism and the danger of Republicans in a way they couldn’t avoid — we’ve been gaining ground.
We gained a Senate seat, state legislative chambers, and governorships in 2022, and we outperformed 2020 in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. We reached 59 percent in Colorado, 57 percent in Pennsylvania, 55 percent in Michigan, and 54 percent in New Hampshire.
I should just put an exclamation point on this. In 2004, Colorado was so Republican that the Kerry campaign didn’t even compete in Colorado. Today, it’s not a battleground state for us. Jared Polis got 59 percent of the vote in Colorado.
We lost New Mexico in 2004. New Mexico is now not a battleground state for us. So we’ve seen this movement of the Southwest, the bluing of the Southwest, as I call it. This was very evident in 2022, but then in 2023, we also won all across the country governorships, special elections and ballot initiatives. We took away the six-week abortion ban in Ohio. We flipped this critical Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. We flipped the state assembly in Virginia.
Because of our work, we have the first African American speaker of the Virginia assembly in history — Don Scott, a phenomenal guy. So, we did extraordinary things in 2023.
Democrats Keep winning
Then, in 2024, we were told that in this New York 3 special election, Tom Suozzi [D-CD3 NY] would be the bellwether, which would tell us everything we needed to know about the election.
The polling had us up only 1, 2, 3 points. We won by 8 points there. A district we had lost by 7.5 points in 2022. We made 2 million phone calls in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Every Democratic household got five handwritten postcards. The muscles of the modern Democratic grassroots really exerted themselves in New York 3, as we’re going to do in November, and we had an extraordinary performance.
We keep winning. We keep overperforming. They keep struggling. They keep losing this basic dynamic that’s happened since Dobbs, where we keep overperforming, they keep struggling. It was even evident last week in Ohio, during this special election in an Ohio House seat, a seat that Trump won by 30 points. Our candidate only lost by 10 points, but we overperformed the district by 20 points with a guy who didn’t spend any money.
It’s because MAGA is this historically ugly thing. Even many Republicans don’t want to go there. As you go forward, you understand in ways that many other people don’t.
The manifestation of the Republican party today in your state is a danger. It is a threat to the rights and freedoms of people that we hold dear. It is running against the libertarian tradition and the Democratic tradition of the state. If you do the work, you guys could come out on election day as the biggest winners of any state in the country for the Democrats if you continue to do your hard work and bust your ass and do all the postcarding, the phone calls, the texting, the canvassing and all, even in 113-degree weather that you have to do. Let me know what I can do to help you. I want to conclude my remarks, Larry, by saying thank you all.
We should kick their ass this November. I would so much rather be us than them in every way imaginable. I certainly am just really proud of everything you guys have been able to do in recent years. Thank you all.
Kirsten Engel, Arizona CD6
Larry Bodine: Let me get the ball rolling. First of all, thank you for sharing your time with us tonight. I know you’re an extremely busy guy, and you’re under a lot of pressure. We’re very grateful, but I’m telling you, we need inspiration from you. So thank you for coming tonight.
I wondered if you’d share your thoughts about the Congressional District 6 race that we have here. We have a brilliant law professor, Kirsten Engel, running, and she’s a professor who does her homework. But she’s running against this MAGA enabler, this anti-abortion right Juan Ciscomani. This is a guy who voted against the bipartisan border bill. What are your observations about that?
Simon Rosenberg: I interviewed Kirsten for Hopium. She’s a very thoughtful, serious, virtuous leader. I was really impressed with her thoughtfulness, her hard work ethic and her willingness to do what it takes.
Ciscomani is obviously one of those Republicans who should not be in office anymore. That is not really in the spirit of the people of Arizona and is far too extreme for the district.
I would take my kids to Tucson when it still had spring training games. One of the highlights of our trips was always going to the Desert Museum, and my kids have extraordinary memories of that place.
I met Congresswoman Giffords during one of those trips. I visited her in her campaign office, and she was a very dear friend of mine. My kids all met her when she was running in her first congressional election.
Arizona is still a powerful part of my family story. I’ve been learning a lot about the House races around the country. They’re all really close, and they come down to the difference between the execution and how much work everybody does.
We should win in Arizona. We should win in the David Schweikert seat [in CD1], and we should win the House. Still, the difference between us having the election we all want to have and us being really unhappy on election day is how much work we’re all going to do.
I have a slogan for Hopium: do more, worry less. We have to all spend less of our time worrying and just doing the work. You guys know how to do that.
You’ve got to figure out your highest and best use. Where can you add the most value, whether it’s postcarding, canvassing, phone calling or being an information warrior and spreading good information about Kirsten Engel?
Whatever it’s going to be. You’ve got to figure out your highest and best use and spend as much time there as you can in these closing months because I do think the difference between us having the election we all want and being disappointed is really up to us and how much work we all do together.
Larry Bodine: The polls go back and forth in terms of who’s in the lead, and they’re all in the lead. The person is in the lead by one point or another, which is in the margin of error. I understand your thesis is that you don’t pay attention to the polls. What really counts is what happens in elections that are taking place.
Look at more than just polling.
Simon Rosenberg: In 2022, [TargetSmart CEO] Tom Bonior and I said there was not going to be a red wave, and it was going to be a close competitive election. We looked at more than polling. We looked at election performance. We looked at voter registration. We looked at fundraising. We looked at the early vote.
We were able to look at something broader than just polling. Polling is very expensive because response rates are going down. There’s also a lot of junky Republican polling in the system. If you center your understanding of politics around polling, you are going to be disappointed.
There’s a lot of other information available to us so we can take a more complete picture of what’s happening. I had lunch recently with the head of the DCCC, who’s running all the House races. We didn’t talk about polling the entire lunch because every election is close. Every one of these races is close. Polling can’t get any more precise than that. This presidential election is near. Your house races are going to be close.
The key to polling is that it’s just one piece of data and a much broader set of understandings.
As in Arizona, Kari Lake’s awfulness cannot be easily conveyed through data. You have to live there. You have to understand her titanic Olympian level of awfulness and extremism and how it’s an X factor in politics.
The electorate is fatigued about their craziness, and that’s not easily captured in data. There is this sense in the electorate that something’s gone wrong with them and that we need a better path.
I still think it’s the driving force of our politics. We can present a positive, optimistic response to that, to tell people that we’ve made things better. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll where they polled in the battleground states, clear majorities in Arizona said things have gotten much better in Arizona in the last two years.
Be optimistic.
That’s really good news for us because we should be able to say they’ve gotten better because of Joe Biden. There’s not as much doom and gloom with voters about the economy when you ask them about their situation and how things are going in their states. If people were down on the economy and down on inflation, we wouldn’t have been winning these elections all across the country in the last two years. Be optimistic. Chin up and fight really hard. The way I describe Hopium is that Hopium is hope with a plan. We just don’t hope elections are going to go well. We do the work to make it so right. That’s part of why you’re all here tonight.
Larry Bodine: We have one more question from our volunteer and leader, Vivian Hart, who wants to know what the most effective things to say to undecided voters are.
Simon Rosenberg: There are many arguments. If you subscribe to Hopium, which is free, I will give you lots of data to support these arguments. But you have your own issues. With your Senate and House races, the Democratic Party is fighting every day for you, and we’ve made things better.
We have a track record of making things better. Bill Clinton made things better, Barack Obama made things better, and Joe Biden has made things better. The last three Republican presidents have led to recession: higher deficits and American decline.
Trump represents something that could alter the course of our country’s history. He is the first person to run for president who doesn’t fundamentally believe in democracy and is potentially going to end American democracy for all time. The simple message is that Biden has been a good president. The country’s better off. He’s a man of deep integrity who fights for us every day.
The orange guy, the ugly guy, the extremist, is going to lead the country to ruin, what with his ego, obsession with himself, and need to stay in power. He puts that in front of all of us, and that is at a time when we can make things better.
The Republicans lead to chaos and decline, and that is going to be the story and narrative that we all tell. At some levels, you can overthink things in life, including politics. It may be really easy this election, which is that we’re a good party that fights really hard to make things better.
Republicans have lost their way, and they don’t deserve power here, in Arizona or in Washington. It may be that’s what it comes down to, which is this very elemental understanding that we were good people who worked really hard to make things better. And they’re a party that’s lost its way. It can’t be trusted with power again.
Tell voters about your passion.
The most effective thing you can do when you talk to people is that. I use this point at Hopium. We can go out and make the case. You’re most effective as an advocate, not by reading talking points but by finding a single issue that really matters to you, and that is the reason.
You’re doing this and mastering it, understanding it, studying it, and then conveying when you’re with friends and saying, listen, the reason I’m supporting Joe Biden, and here’s why I’m doing it. That passion and that intensity are what persuade people. It’s the thing that pushes people when you connect with them, whether it’s reproductive freedom, loss of democracy, economic growth, climate change, or gun safety. You have lots of issues. Pick one thing and go there and live there. And say, look, we all talk about a lot of issues in our life, but here’s why I’m where I am and why I’m fighting for Joe Biden. This is what motivates me to become an expert in one narrow place that matters to you.
Most people don’t live in a place of enormous complexity. They want to know that you’re passionate and you’re connected, that you love your country, and that you’re fighting for something for something bigger than just partisanship.
You have to be persuasive. You have to go to that place where you’re a passionate, proud American who loves your country, who’s motivated by love of country and patriotism.
That’s the answer, Larry. What’s the most persuasive thing we can all do? We have to be unrelenting, passionate patriots. Then we have to be motivated by love of country. If we do that, I think we’re going to kick their ass because Donald Trump is not motivated by that.
He wants to stay out of jail. That’s what’s motivating him. It’s a tragedy for this amazing country, and we have no choice other than to kick their ass. Thank you all, bring it home. I listen because I’m here. Now you have something you have to do, which is we have to win both chambers in the Arizona State Legislature.
We’ve got to get this done. This is our deal. I came here tonight, and now you have to win both chambers. It’s not good enough to win with Ruben and Joe Biden. We’ve got to flip both chambers.
But I really want to end by saying, listen, you’re part of one of the most successful democratic parties in the country. You guys have done remarkable things in recent years. This matters more than anything else. We’ve got to do it together. Let me know what I can do to help you.
Thanks, everybody.
Larry Bodine: Thank you so much, Simon. I understand you have a CNN program to get to. I want to thank you so much for your time, energy, and effort. The next time you’re in Tucson, dinner at the Congress Hotel is on us.