Pennsylvania Democrats, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, are pointing to a stunning upset in a special election for a deep-red state House district as proof that the party has momentum while campaigning this fall for a trifecta in Harrisburg.
Butler County Democrat Brandon Dukes said his apparent victory over Republican Scott Timko, by fewer than 100 votes as of Wednesday afternoon, was thanks to his focus on local issues, such as a major corridor perennially under construction to the frustration of residents.
“We kept it local, we kept it practical, and we kept it common sense,” Dukes said in an interview.
The 12th Pennsylvania House District, just north of Pittsburgh, went for Donald Trump by more than 18 percentage points just two years ago and had been held by Republicans since 1999.
88 votes
Remember that the next time someone says their vote doesn’t matter.
If you tally up all districts where there was a close race like this, at least in FPTP, you’ll often find the election for the winning party is by a very small vote count. They might win the popular vote by millions, but they might only have won their power in the thousands.
They’re probably going to call for a recount and spend 2 years counting like they pulled in Arizona after 2020.
Gas is like 5 dollars. This is the pendulum swinging back. Its just swung hard enough this time to flip unusual places. You can’t really hide all this incompetence. We’ll see, the ol’ pedos are still acting like there is no consequences for their actions.
I have to laugh because all the Tone Police were out there telling Democrats that they were being insensitive to talk about the facts related to the economy, specifically in 2024. I mean, holy shit, I guess the Democrats were not supposed to talk about the economy that was the envy of the world?
Ever since donnie’s “win”, I’m watching donnie’s bootlicks - like Kevin Hassett, grinning while talking about killing tons and tons of jobs and claiming it’s about “waste, fraud, and abuse” (they all repeated that mantra over and over and over early in 2025 especially during the height of “DOGE’s” blatant criminal acts. It was like watching an actual cult trying to sell their wares).
And just recently, I saw that dumbass Scott Bessent talking about how the economy was like an emergency room victim that was “backed over by a truck” and that they - this is the donnie administration, mind you - had to stabilize the victim, etc.
LOL. In his analogy, the people in that truck backing up over the economy was himself and everyone in this stupid administration.
But the fucking balls on these assholes. If voters are pissed, they fucking should be. Everything is way more expensive. Gas is ridiculously surging, again. And to sit there and imperiously blame all their bullshit on Biden? FUCK YOU.
Also, I’d love to know what all the Murc’s Law media Tone Police are saying right now about how these Republican jagoffs are talking about how the “golden age” when it comes to economics. If anything, I’m sure they spend most of their time lecturing liberals on civility.
I remember the gaslighting and guilt trips from establishment Dems immediately after the 2024 elections, even though I held my nose and voted Harris. I immediately railed against the DNC for their corruption and competence and the Reddit neoliberal echo chamber dog-piled me immediately.
Nixon was not fully prosecuted or even investigated because it was a “time for healing” by Carter.
Reagan/Bush Sr and Iran Contra was outright ignored, not even talked about by Clinton.
Bush Jr legalized torture and Obama said it was time to come together and heal as a nation and swept it under a rug.
Biden waited until the election year to prosecute Trump, so he got to walk on all but E. Jean Carroll’s judgements, was even made king by SCOTUS and didnt use it to stop him or SCOTUS.
Carter? That was Ford:
By the time Carter was in the Whitehouse, there was nothing he could do about Nixon.
Carter said Ford’s pardon of Nixon was improper and ill-advised:
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/13/archives/nixon-broke-the-law-carter-says.html
Democratic socialists don’t play ball the same. They’re true progressives cut from a different cloth than the status-quo Dems like Biden and the rest. Get enough of them in office, and we’ll actually see a bonafide history-making sea change the likes of which the US hasn’t seen in nearly a century.
That includes everything you could wish for and more. It includes permanent and long-overdue reforms to our horrifically broken government and electoral process, an end to the institutionalized corruption of the citizens united era, expedient and public trials to round up all of the treasonous fascists, pedophiles, and billionaires given unchecked license to trample democracy and ignore every law while enslaving, brainwashing, brutalizing and murdering the population.
All that and more, if only people continue to show up and vote for true progressives
First, we want the bloodbath. Track every one of these criminals down to the ends of the earth, put them in prison and strip them of their wealth. Make sure the world sees what happens to oligarchs waging class warfare.
Get out, vote, and hold them to account when they don’t take this regime to task.
While I want that to be true, its worth remembering they are still politicians. Sometimes we put our political heroes on a pedestal and expect them to save us, but if we blind ourselves to their potential shortcomings by heroizing them then we can only take one step forward (however far forward they can take us), and to make real progress we need a lot more than one single step
They can make good progress and still let us down at some point, and when they do we replace them with someone who will continue to carry the ball forward and do the work we need.
Be warry of presuming perfection of those who promise progress. They can be the right choice and make real change for us, but we must remain able to see when they fall short.
to make progress we need a lot more than a single step.
Sure, but step by step is how progress is made, and the first belongs to voters who in every election must rally behind someone if they expect to be represented. I know you’re trying to say we must hold our representatives’ feet to the fire, and I agree, but you must agree the time and place to do that was the primaries, the last of which was August 4th.
August 4th was the critical point beyond which every bit of naysaying, depression-posting, hem-hawing, cynicism, doomerism, and these defeatist expressions of low expectations, are now a direct service to Republicans and the Trump regime.
I know this will make a lot of people mad, but take inventory of the opinions shared around here and ask yourself: is it motivating your comrades to get out and vote?
And do be honest. Because this one’s for all the marbles.
I absolutely agree that voting is agency we should use and that the first step is necessary, you cannot take more than one step without the first. I don’t think electoralism by itself is enough, but I don’t think we should leave any available agency on on the table unused
I explicitly disagree that the time for interrogating whether people are doing a good enough job on our behalf is only at specific points in the electoral cycle. I think we have to do that constantly.
I’m extremely excited about Mamdani but I’m not going to overlook any shortcomings he displays, like recently condemning a protest outside a synagogue as antisemitic when the synagogue was organizing auctions of Palestinian land. And to be clear, I’m still excited about him, and what he represents, and the progress he might bring to new York and the national political stage.
I dont think anyone outside of MAYBE revolutionary communist folks who feel electoralism is a trap are gonna get mad at you for your point about needing to encourage people to vote, but I definitely don’t think anyone really wants to hear mamdani criticism right now.
I get the point that you’re making is that with an election coming up there isnt room for reminders to keep the fallibility of politicians in mind, but frankly I think that’s exactly how we end up treating politicians like our chosen champions who become an extension of ourself who we cannot critisize
If youre worried about whether I do enough to advocate people vote here’s me two years ago on my previous instance:
feel free to post your “I voted” stickers in the comments; seeing them makes me happy!
You can do both: encourage people to vote, and also encourage people to have a healthier relationship with electoralism as a tool.
It’s about durm time! Haha love it
We’re on the same page. I realize now you were speaking sincerely about a healthy form of keeping politicians accountable after elections. I was addressing the defeatism in this thread (and many others) that’s often disingenuously excused as “keeping Democrats accountable,” since that was why I broke out the pom poms in the first place. Sorry for mistaking you for a doomer.
No worries, it can be hard to read people online, and not giving into defeatism is deeply important
Hope you have a lovely day my friend ☺️❤️
There wont be. They will be ousted and thats that. No consequences, apart from losing their cash cow. Those checks and balances are too damn slow. Dems always wonder ‘what if its us?’.
Old Dems? Yes probably. But get more AOCs Bernies Mamdani’s and El Sayeds, and other progressives who won’t play by the rules, and I think we’ll see change.
People need to not give up though, for that to happen. They need to show up and vote.
Yeah the smiling foxes are guarding the henhouse, rather than the snarling wolves.
Not as many anti-Democrat comments as I expected, given the topic was something going well for them. I’ll check back tomorrow.
“It’s the economy, stupid”. True as it ever was.
Pennsylvania is ridiculous. So close to very liberal states like NY, DE and NJ. Philadelphia is so fucking blue.
But then the rest of PA is just wild and nicknamed Pennsyltucky.
Would be nice to keep it blue.
I know the Pennsyltucky area very well. Some of the attitudes there are just so…wild.
It’s way too big, it should be three states.
It’s below average for the size of states. Lower 25 for area.
If you mean land shouldn’t dictate how your vote counts, I couldn’t agree more, but before we give a bunch of idiot republicans another couple of representatives and four more senators, let’s maybe fix the representative ratio to stop punishing cities for being dense.
The average state size did not play a role at all in what I said.
It’s basically already three states.
Yeah, I get what you mean, but to keep the ratio of people-to-representative the same you’d need to split the rest of Pennsylvania into 6 states(for a total of 8 new states to replace the original), because ~75% of Pennsylvanians live in urban areas.
It’s an urban/rural thing. Even in Texas, urban areas swing blue, rural swing red. It’s just that there’s vast swaths of rural areas in Texas and it’s been gerrymandered to hell. I’m assuming PA is something similar.
