What...what is this feeling?

It feels familiar yet strange...is this...hope?

Inject it into my veins

I have been accused of being an optimist by people who know me. I am not sure how they could possibly get that but, nonetheless, they might be right. I tend to see the best in people. I ignore the worst moments when I can and seek the light at the end of the tunnel even if sometimes it’s an oncoming train.

Let’s face it…these days it’s often an oncoming train…with one coming from behind.

Then this week happened. After three weeks of infighting, accusations, recriminations, and attacks something that has happened but a few times in American history happened. Joe Biden stepped down as the nominee of his party and then endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris.

To say it was a shock would be an understatement. For a moment everything was confusion. Then Kamala put on her sneakers and Howard hoody and got to work. She made over 100 calls in 10 hours. The filed their FEC paperwork to flip the Biden-Harris campaign to the Harris campaign and opened up the flood gates.

Then history was made.

By Wednesday they had raised $126 million, the most in U.S. political history. Over 1.4 million donors gave with over 62% of them being first time donors. Over 2,000 people applied for jobs on the campaign and well over 100,000 people signed up to volunteer.

Now what?

I found myself feeling something I hadn’t in ages. Hope. It’s not to say that Joe Biden hasn’t had the most successful Presidency in the modern era. He took us from the actual depths of the pandemic, a looking recession, millions out of work, and a world economy on the brink and led us out of the dark. It’s easy to forget just how bad things were on January 20th, 2021. They were bad.

Now they aren’t and that’s because Joe Biden gave us a steady hand at the helm. He hired good people and let them do their jobs. He didn’t engage in palace intrigue and he left his ego in the bedroom every morning. He served as a gracious counterpoint to the poison and vitriol of Donald Trump and his movement.

In many ways he met the moment better than we could have hoped. In some ways he didn’t. He never seemed to truly understand the threat of MAGA and its capacity for evil. He assumed that just going back to normal would restore the long cherished norms and traditions of a bygone era dating back to when he started his political career 50 years ago.

In many ways it’s what we needed. In this moment it became difficult. We watched him stumble in the debate and sadly see a beloved leader lose his fastball. Then he did something that is unheard of. He stepped away from power and handed it to a new generation. I’ve served with heroes. I’ve seen things in combat from others that made me gasp in wonder.

Stepping away from the most powerful job in the world is heroic beyond measure.

Let’s F’ing Go!

Now things are exploding. Last night over 126,000 white women joined the largest Zoom in history to discuss what we must do as a group that has been part of the problem. They heard from celebrities, activists, and sports stars about talking to their friends and neighbors about the stakes of this election and then they raised over $2 million in 2 hours.

There are 103 days until Election Day and this is going to be a sprint. So, I wanted to focus on this moment and what lies ahead. I didn’t want to do another show about MAGA, Christian Nationalism, militias, and the rot on the other side. I wanted to talk about hope, change, and the passing of the baton. I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted more than the original ‘hopium’ dealer himself, Simon Rosenberg.

Simon said he could carve out half an hour.

We talked for an hour. It’s that kind of a moment. We are both so excited and energized. We have been telling you that we are winning and nobody believed us. Now it feels like they might. We just have to do the work.

So…let’s get to it. Donate. Volunteer. Write postcards. Phone Bank. Stand on the side of the road and wave signs. Anything. Just get in the fight for our freedom now.

In the meantime. I want this episode of the podcast to motivate you and give you hope. It was a joyous conversation full of that weird word…hope.

The Hopium Episode

Simon Rosenberg

Fred sits down with the biggest hopium dealer in the nation to discuss the moment and what lies ahead. Simon Rosenberg is the producer of the Substack community the ‘Hopium Chronicles’ and was the founder and president of NDN/New Policy Institute, a center-left think tank in Washington, DC. He moved on this year to take his fight for our democracy into a direct mission of motivating and informing Americans on the way we can take back our nation. Simon has been a leader in efforts to modernize the center-left in American politics over the past generation and was the leading voice who predicted the supposed 2022 ‘Red Wave’ would be a crashing failure. He was right.

You must subscribe to his Substack:

Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg

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Let’s GO!!!!!