Summary
Democrat James Malone won a special election for Pennsylvania’s 36th state Senate district, flipping a seat previously held by Republicans in a district Trump won by 15 points.
Malone narrowly defeated Republican Josh Parsons by less than 500 votes, running on opposition to Elon Musk’s influence in the Trump administration.
Governor Josh Shapiro praised the victory as a rejection of extremism.
The win reduces the GOP majority in the state Senate to 27-23 and signals potential Democratic competitiveness in upcoming elections.
But will they do anything with it or are they just more paid off politicians working in cahoots with the Republicans towards the goals of the elites?
Can we have less defeatism and more hope? Where’s that Kamala ‘hope’ and ‘joy’ energy from this past* summer?
It died when she tried tried appealing to “moderate republicans” instead of democrats.
goddamn right it did
and to salt the wounds they catered to celebs and the rich while ignoring the citizens that were protesting right outside the convention
Man you people are a bunch of fucking snowflakes after all aren’t you?
Throw a hissy fit because the only viable candidate that wasn’t going to quite literally destroy our democracy didn’t turn out perfect… “Wah she tried to appeal to people I don’t like because they’re a much larger base and they actually fucking vote.” Grow up. This shit is so embarrassing for actual adults on the left (though I can’t wait to hear why I don’t pass your purity test).
Y’all have a lot to learn about what it means to have a vote in a two party, first past the post system. Many of us hoped the last election would have been enough, but apparently not.
If you haven’t grasped it yet, I’m not sure you’re capable of understanding. You even said yourself that she, “tried to appeal to” those people, which implies that you understand that it was 100% a political move to try to get votes.
“You people”?
Who are you talking about? Harris destroyed her own campaign by squandering all the momentum gained from dropping Biden off the ticket.
She was never a viable candidate because she chose to fight right-wing populism with mealy-mouthed bipartisanship.
I genuinely do not understand what your point is. It sounds like you’ve got your understanding of electoral politics backwards, the onus is on political parties to earn our votes and parties that can’t convince people to vote for them lose elections. Individual choice doesn’t matter, what matters is who has the best propaganda.
Yes you people. Fuck off with the faux outrage.
She’s a politician that did a stupid politician thing. It’s so fucking stupid to give a single shit about it. She tried to appeal to “old school” conservatives who she thought may have been lucid enough to see the danger Trump posed to us all.
Clearly it failed. But it’s a really fucking stupid reason to not vote for her. Just completely ignorant of the political reality we were in.
I’m not outraged, I’m confused. Who is “you people” supposed to be referring to?
And yet, here you are getting mad because people didn’t give enough of a shit about it.
Says the guy trying to blame the voters in a country that science says is not and has never been a democracy.
PA has always been a weird purple state. We have demographics across the political spectrum, and most of the elected officials on both sides of the aisle are moderates and centrists. There’s little political will to pull the conservative social bullshit you see in the South, but there also isn’t much of a progressive movement out of any of the cities. We have high concentrations of extreme wealth in the suburbs bordering extreme poverty in urban and rural communities. We have horse farms and cities. We have shale deposits, corporate headquarters, strong unions, and meth labs. We have a significant Jewish population and a significant number of hate groups and christofascists. We have immigrants and Amish. We have some of the best schools and worst schools in the country, and they play football against each other.
If there’s one rule in PA politics, it’s that business is business. Fascists and progressives don’t get far because they both impede business. Most residents are exposed to a variety of people, but there’s enough land between the haves and the have nots to prevent too much empathy from taking root. The state legislature will always be red, and the executives will tend to be blue. Even if there’s a blue wave, it won’t likely result in anything too impressive.
Depends on how much they like being alive