"Trump Naps, Rages and Golfs, the President Governs"

*Published with the generous permission of Simon Rosenberg. Read more of his important work on his Hopium substack.

By Simon Rosenberg

Trump Naps, Rages and Golfs, the President Governs - The contrast between these two men has been on full display these last few weeks. Here’s what Biden has been doing:

• Got his security package through the Congress over MAGA’s fierce opposition, and re-established American leadership in the fight against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the slaughtering of the Ukrainian people
• Hosted the Japanese Prime Minster for talks and a State Dinner, further strengthening our new economic and security framework in Asia

Yesterday, together with the Mexican President, he announced new, stepped initiatives to stop the flow of migrants to our Southern border. This is after Trump and MAGA blocked passage of a bi-partisan border deal negotiated by Biden and his team.

• Significant progress has been made towards a deal for both a hostage release and a cease fire in Gaza
• The Wall Street Journal called the strong, resilient American economy the “envy of the world”

A new USA Today story on crime rates in America interviewed crime data expert Jeff Asher:As early data showed murders declining nationwide last year, Asher was careful about overstating things. But as the big decline continued, he wrote in December that he had “seen enough” and was ready to declare that the U.S. was experiencing a major drop in killings.

“Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded,” Asher wrote online.

The decrease in murders is "potentially historically large," Asher told USA TODAY, and it's not just killings that are declining. Preliminary 2023 FBI data “paint the picture" of a big decrease in overall crime, he wrote.

Biden governs and leads, on hard things, big things, on the things that matter to all of us.

• Meanwhile, Trump is back on trial in NY for illegally covering up payments for his adulterous affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, fresh from having been found to have committed sexual assault and defamation, and committing years of Olympian levels of financial fraud. He’s spent more time in court sleeping in recent weeks than campaigning, another sign of the unprecedented problems he and the GOP are encountering now:Trump is facing an historic rebellion against him from other members of his own party, with 2 former Republican Vice Presidents, a former party nominee, former Party chair and dozens of prominent Republicans including many who served for him now openly saying they will not vote for him this year. The permission structure being forged by Republicans for Republicans to not vote for Trump will be much more powerful than 2020 and 2022, something we are seeing again and again in Trump’s underperformance of public polling in the primary states and the stubborn oversized Haley vote even long after she dropped out.
• Trump in his impulsive idiocy even told Haley and her voters he didn’t want or need them - truly WTF????????Trump candidates failed to bring their coalition together in 2022, and this remains the likely scenario for Trump this November
• Republicans are struggling to raise hard dollars up and down the ticket, denying their campaigns the resources necessary to grow serious campaigns and communicate with voters. Six months out Democratic candidates are raising more money than Republicans, and have more money in the bank
• Republicans have been losing elections of all kinds all across the country in the last few years, including what we were told was the big 2024 bellwether, NY-3, which we won by 8 points, a 15 point swing from 16 months earlier
• In the next few weeks tens of millions of women in AZ and FL are going to lose their reproductive rights and freedoms, reminding all voters across the US, powerfully, of the serious threat MAGA has become to our freedoms and democracy. Trump in his “states right” abortion stance, put the GOP on the side of the most extreme abortion restrictions in the nation, locking in the entire Party for policies which poll at 15-25% nationally on what is a top tier voting issue for tens of millions of voters
• In the battleground states unions are mounting their most ambitious campaign for the Democratic ticket that we have ever seen
• The RNC fired their Chairwoman and the entire leadership team of the RNC, the Committee continues to go through a difficult leadership transition, and is struggling to staff up and mount a serious Presidential effort
• We are seeing an extraordinary exodus of GOP House members, the Speaker is under threat again, the House GOP just dramatically rebuked their own President on Ukraine funding and the war the pro-Putin MAGAs are waging against the rest of the GOP continues to be debilitating
• Dozens of Republican officials have been indicted in key battleground states, and many Republican parties in the battlegrounds have been driven into the ground
• Due to Biden’s success as President, most of the major GOP attacks against him are evaporating. This is a big problem…..
• There are six disqualifying things voters are going to come to know about Trump this year that they didn’t know about him in 2020, an election he lost by 4.5 points
• Polling has moved towards the Dems in recent weeks, Dem Senate polling remains encouraging and Republicans are having more “bad candidate” problems in AZ and NC. Trump had now made it clear that he’s unhappy with Kari Lake and the MAGA shitshow we are witnessing in Arizona, and ultra-MAGA Mark Robinson is trailing in all public polls in NC, some by significant margins
• Recent House polling finds Dem advantages in the battleground, and a recent poll in CA found Dems leading in the swing House races there 53-43
• Several recent polls show Kennedy drawing more from Trump than Biden, meaning the monster now may be coming for Dr. Frankenstein

I want to be very clear about all this means. The Republican thing is in bad shape. Warning signals are blaring and blinking. While today the election may be close and competitive, the Republicans are showing significant signs of institutional/organizational weakness and disarray, they’ve been losing elections of all kinds all across the country for years, they are locked into the most extreme policy position a modern American political party has ever championed, polling has started moving against them and their Presidential candidate has been off the campaign trail for weeks. All of these things will matter, a lot, over the six months of a general election to come, and all of this is a central reason why I am very optimistic about winning this year. Their thing is simply the ugliest political thing we’ve ever seen, and if put our heads down and do the work we should be able to win this year.