Chop Wood, Carry Water 4/2

Sweet, sweet victory!

Hi, all, and happy Wednesday.

And it is happy indeed!

This newsletter is supposed to be dark on Wednesdays, but how could I skip it today when yesterday brought so much light? Congratulations to every single one of you! The victories we just experienced are the result of your hard work, determination, and faith. Even when you felt afraid and devoid of hope you kept working. Yesterday we finally, finally got to see some results.

And what results they were! First, we won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by ten points. We literally defeated Elon Musk and his millions in an election he claimed “would decide the trajectory of not only the whole country, but perhaps all of ‘Western civilization’ and ‘the future of the world.’” He may have been right about that, but not in the way he thought. There’s no overstating the magnitude and importance of this victory alone. But that wasn’t it.

We also held the Superintendent of Public Instruction seat in Wisconsin—this was a lesser known but critically important race on the same ballot. Jill Underly won by about 5 points, defeating a Republican school voucher proponent who would have been a disaster for public education.

In Florida we didn’t win—no huge surprise—but we shrunk the Republicans’ margins by massive, massive amounts—16 points in the 6th district and 22 points in district 1. The latter is the largest overperformance by a Democrat in a special Congressional election since the Trump era began in 2016. HUGE. We should make sure to reach out to Gay Valimont and Josh Weil on social media and congratulate them on their extraordinary accomplishments. This is an instance where winning literally isn’t everything. This margin change, I guarantee you, is causing deep, deep concern in Republican circles. GOOD.

But there’s more! Senator Cory Booker broke the record for the longest floor speech in history, and in so doing knocked white supremacist Strom Thurmond out of history’s first-place spot. Bravo! Booker’s “filibuster”—it wasn’t actually one, as there was no legislation being blocked—was spectacular, thoughtful, emotional, and furious. Tens of millions of Americans watched parts of it on YouTube, C-Span and TikTok. And y’all? According to “Cory Booker’s Long Speech: By the Numbers” there were more than 28,000 voicemails of encouragement left on his main office line. Twenty-eight thousand! That was YOU!

And honestly, the fact that Booker made this speech at all was because of you as well. Certainly once he stood up the magic was all his—and his staff’s, who’d prepared him for the moment exquisitely—but the fact that he chose to take this action was because his constituents, many of whom subscribe to this newsletter, demanded it. He said as much! You pushed, and pushed, and finally he moved. AMAZING WORK!

And Booker’s not the only one who moved. Yesterday Senator Schiff announced he would be placing a hold on the nomination of Edward Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin is a dangerous, awful, and unfit nominee, so Schiff’s hold is extraordinarily welcome news. We’ve had to push the Senator hard here in California, but once again our efforts are paying off. All Californians should be sure to call Schiff’s office to say thanks.

Finally, yesterday brought victories in lesser-known elections across the country, including in Aurora, Illinois, where we flipped a Mayoral seat, and in Dane and Winnebago Counties in Wisconsin, where two Democrats flipped County Executive seats. I’ll try to have the full list in “Extra! Extra!” on Sunday, but just know that it’s long!

Oh, and one last thing! We just learned this morning that Tesla’s sales plummeted last quarter. According to the Verge the just-released production and delivery report was Tesla’s worst in three years.

The AP has more:

Dan Ives of Wedbush said in a note to clients that Tesla is seeing soft demand in the United States and China, as well as facing pressure in Europe.

“The brand crisis issues are clearly having a negative impact on Tesla...there is no debate,” he said.

Ives said that Wall Street and analysts alike knew that the first-quarter figures were likely to be bad, but that it was even worse than expected.

“We are not going to look at these numbers with rose-colored glasses...they were a disaster on every metric,” he said.

A disaster. On every. Metric. Glorious!

One person’s disaster, of course, is another person’s victory. Yesterday victory was ours in a giant way. Tesla’s numbers today are another huge win, and every one of you who’s attended a Tesla takedown so far has helped make them happen. THANK YOU. Let’s keep going!

I’m not going to give you any actions today, my friends, except to once again urge you to call and thank Senator Booker if you haven’t (his office numbers are in yesterday’s post), to call Senator Schiff to thank him if you’re in California, and to post a thanks to Gay Valimont and Josh Weil on their social media feeds.

Otherwise you deserve a day of rest.

After all, while other people were reading—or watching—the news, you, my friends, were making it. That is a huge, huge deal. Congratulations. Tomorrow we get back to doing it again.

Thanks for all you do.

Jess