Uh, it’s not a “big Donald Trump district” any longer.
Main stream media sucks so bad.
Dug a bit, and apparently this seat has literally never been held by a Republican; this is quite the misleading headline.
Her name is “Chasity”, by the way, not “Chastity”.
This shit is exactly how things were reported in the runup to the 2024 election. Even if they don’t fuck with the elections, I am confidently predicting the midterms are not going to be a blowout like people are hoping.
The Dems might, might, barely squeeze out a majority in the House. And then starts the age old game of having to capitulate to the 2-3 congresspeople who say they’re Dems but vote with the GOP every time.
Not a snowballs chance in hell of Dems winning the Senate.
People are going to be hit with a truck of reality come the mid terms. Not that they’ll learn anything. Next election will be the same shit of “we’re totally going to win guys!” before fizzling into nothing.
If you are hoping for the midterms for justice to be served against this administration, keep dreaming. It’s not going to happen. Ever. Trump will die before he ever sees the inside of a courtroom regarding Epstein. No matter who the next leadership is, they’ll choose to move on without giving any consequences in the name of “unity”.
And the people will grumble, and ultimately do absolutely nothing about it.
First of all, IF the Midterms actually happen unmolested by MAGA, it WILL be a giant blowout. MAGA only has a one vote lead, and literally EVERY special election has gone against Republicans badly.
The Manchurian DINOs are a realistic problem, and Dem leadership needs to strongly address the issue with those people. That will require NEW DEM leadership across the board.
And the Senate wasn’t in contention before, but with MAGA being so universally reviled in this country, it’s now in play.
And Trump probably won’t see a jail cell due to Epstein, unless we suddenly get about a hundred smoking guns, including photos and videos. The evidence is too messed up, the chain of possession is destroyed, it has been under the control of MAGA, and NONE of it is trustworthy as evidence.
On the other hand, I believe that he will see a jail cell over his Insurrection and his Stolen Classified Documents, and a LOT of other stuff. Those prosecutions have been put on hold, but they aren’t gone. When Trump is out of office, Jack Smith can refile, and start up right where he left off, and he seems highly motivated to do just that.
O
I hope your optimism is vidicated, but…
This specific race was for a deep-blue seat, prior to this race the Republican candidate had at best gotten 18%, and this time the republican got 38%, the most any republican has ever gotten for that state seat. Comparing Trump vote to state senate run seems to be apples and oranges for this district.
EVERY special election has gone against Republicans badly.
Well, except for the fact that not a single seat has been flipped. I suppose I can grant that the Republicans slipped 10-15 points in these races compared to the election where Trump was running, but of the three chances to actually flip a republican seat, none did anything.
On the senate, looking at the seats up, I could see maybe Georgia, NC, and Maine as potentially flippable, very remote chance of Texas… So 2-3 gains for the democrats at most. I don’t think Senate is realistically in play, they need to flip 4 red seats to get even a simple majority, still well short of a filibuster proof majority and impossibly short of a veto-proof/remove president from office majority.
his Insurrection and his Stolen Classified Documents
While not ‘dead’ dead, the supreme court basically gave him a 100% pass on the insurrection, they basically declared that a president cannot be held criminally liable for anything while in office. The classified documents maybe but the supreme court can easily intervene and say the records are forever under the president’s jurisdiction to classify as he pleases.
the supreme court basically gave him a 100% pass on the insurrection, they basically declared that a president cannot be held criminally liable for anything while in office.
It’s important to remember two things: SCOTUS ruled that POTUS had immunity for any OFFICIAL acts as president, AND this has not been tested in any court.
Official Acts as president would be those outlined in the Constitution, not literally everything he does, like MAGA likes to tell you (hint: they lie, all the time). MAGA was making noise about charging Obama with murder for his drone strikes of terrorist targets (even though they’d have no problem doing worse), but this ruling would give him immunity for that, since that falls under his Constitutional responsibilities. On the other hand, if Trump were to make good on his threat to shoot someone in the head on Fifth Avenue, he could still be charged with murder, since the murder of an innocent American citizen would NOT fall under his Constitutional responsibilities. Gee, where did the order for ICE to start shooting people in the street originate?
Likewise, there is no possible way that any activity as seditious as leading an Insurrection could ever be interpreted as within a president’s Constitutional responsibilities, nor would stealing hundreds of classified documents, some of which were likely sold.
He will still get away with countless crimes, hidden by his presidency as well as the sheer flood of corruption that flows from him on an industrial scale. But there are plenty that he can still answer for. For instance, his corruption has directly violated the emoluments clause in mind-boggling ways, and all of it is expressly forbidden in the Constitution, and therefore could NEVER be construed as “OFFICIAL” acts.
The Supreme Court has never put guidelines on the presidency before that ruling, and now there are actual boundaries, as defined by “OFFICIAL Acts.” Obviously, MAGA is going to interpret that as broadly as possible, and it’s up to the rest of America to interpret it tightly, and test it in court, over and over and over.
I generally ignore anything from News Week, Raw Story, or the Daily Beast. They all do stuff like this. They twist facts to get a story where there is none.
Who the fuck calls themself Chasity?
Nobody. Usually it’s the parents who decide their child’s name.
Not me, I got to pick my own name as a child. Admittedly, “Small-Weiner Stegosaurus” might have been a regrettable choice.
Chasity does.
Yet another over performance by Democrats - this was a Trump +14 district that voted D+24 yesterday.
But is it an overperform? Looking back to 2011, the strongest performance by a GOP for this specific seat is 38%, and it was this election, the last GOP candidate had 18% before this…
For whatever reason, local and presidential elections can very much swing differently, and in this example it clearly looks like you can’t read much of anything into the results since it has been different from presidential outcomes already…
In fucking* Louisiana. I love how that’s nowhere near the headline. Hilarious.
Democrat Chastity Verret Martinez has won the special election for Louisiana House District 60, defeating Republican challenger Brad Daigle by a wide margin in a district that supported President Donald Trump in 2024.
Take the wins where you can get them, but it’s worth noting the vacated seat was held by a Democrat. This isn’t a flip. The district traditionally learns blue at the local/state level, as per the article.
Not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but the “oh my god those backwards Louisiana hicks actually voted for a Democrat?!” Narrative is needlessly divisive and kinda shitty. That district has been for years.
The only thing worse than vindictive, bigoted conservatives is vindictive, bigoted leftists who don’t want to find ways to live alongside the stupid hicks.
At least they’re stupid enough that they can be turned and manipulated to supporting better outcomes, but leftists holding a grudge do entire goddamn worldbuilding exercises around justifying hating everyone with a simple life and a simple mind.
(Go ahead and downvote me browser, while you do, think about what kind of biases you hold against people based on how you imagine their house and yard to look.)
in my experience, it’s liberals, not leftists, doing that more often
In my experience there are a LOT of leftists who cling to the label without actually being more than a liberal with some angry outbursts.
I don’t disagree. Class Rules Everything Around Me.
The only thing worse than vindictive, bigoted conservatives is vindictive, bigoted leftists who don’t want to find ways to live alongside the stupid hicks.
do you really want me to get my list of people leftists hate because “stupid hicks” is pretty low on the list compared to folk with the wrong skin color or disability or sexuality. of course point that out to a leftist and they’ll deny it, but when you look at what they actually do instead of what they say, it’s clear as daylight.
I think it’s the huge margin for the win, and this:
Voters in Louisiana’s 60th House District, which covers parts of Assumption and Iberville Parishes, have historically supported Democrats at the state and local level, but have shifted toward Republicans in federal elections in recent years. Trump carried the district by a 56‑43 margin in 2024 against former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to calculations by The Downballot. In Assumption Parish, Trump received 67.17 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris’ 31.57 percent, while Iberville Parish was closely divided, with Trump at 49.6 percent and Harris at 48.87.
For iberville and assumption, in the presidential elections, support between R and D has moved within bounds of like, 2%, for the last 3 presidential elections.
In that same time frame, the maximum support a republican candidate for the 60th house of representatives has been 18.8%. Not margin, TOTAL.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad news. But the reality of this outcome in this district is “No material shift in voting patterns in area over the last 20 years”.
That still makes the 67% Trump got in 2024 really questionable. But nobody in charge has seemed to bat a fucking eye.
Why would it?
This pattern has existed since before Trump in that district. Leans right at federal level, leans left at state level.
Assumption is slowly sliding more right at the federal level… but also sliding more right at the state level. At 38% of the vote Daigle had the best republican showing in 20 years.
This result isn’t a directional divergence. That would maybe raise an eyebrow.
It’s a pretty purple district and, although Trump won big in this district, they tend to vote blue for the local stuff, and this Democrat replaced an incumbent democrat.
There are a lot of really miserable, insufferable kids on Lemmy right now seething about this because it flies in the face of the “voting is useless, everything will be rigged” narrative that they push to validate not wanting to be involved.
Showing up at the polls is not our problem in the US, it’s getting people involved enough to actually learn about and read what candidates represent. We had the largest voter turnout in US history over the last couple elections, but people basically voted at random because they tuned out of the political chaos.
It’s far more clear this time around who is doing what to disrupt the status-quo in the US and I expect we’re going to see a massive swing in the opposite direction between this November and 2028.
There are a lot of really miserable, insufferable kids on Lemmy right now seething about this because it flies in the face of the “voting is useless, everything will be rigged” narrative that they push to validate not wanting to be involved.
They don’t want to be involved in the actual democratic process, but they reeeeally don’t want to shut the fuck up about their irrelevant opinions.
I am 99% sure it is a CCP effort. Been tracking it for like a year now. Hard to track because it’s contagious.
For the love of God always call out doomers for being suspect. They’re not here because they’re feeling impending doom. They’re here to make you feel impending doom.
Russia/Israel/CCP. Almost all of the doomers are voting doesn’t work, why aren’t you starting a civil war, the dems are just gonna gaza harder than the turnip, etc.
Golly, seems like lots of people don’t like you
not even the commie doomers can stop us now
yay democracy!!
I mean, Im on board with the message overall but I very much think people not getting to the polls is an issue. 90 million chose to sit out last general election. That is a HUGE problem IMO.
It’s still important to push the message to not be lazy about going out and doing the thing, especially in mid-terms which get far less turnout.
But that 89mil who did not vote in 2024 is very close to the average percentage that stays home every election anyway. My point is, the sampling of those who did vote, didn’t necessarily make me think that if uninterested people did show up, that it would have gone much different.
Of the people who were actually registered and voted in 2024, a vast number of the people who voted for Trump identified as Obama voters and Bernie supporters. People had basically discarded whatever political alignment more informed voters adhere to and just looked at the price of eggs at the time and associated that with Biden/Harris, and that was the most informed opinion shaping voting habits.
People did not watch debates. They did not pay attention to large news stories. They got most of their political news from social media; tweets and facebook memes in the small amount of time they spend scrolling content that isn’t entertainment. They did not know what either candidate was advocating and largely didn’t care, most thought it didn’t effect them either way.
This is all by design, and if we want to talk to about vote manipulation, this is the biggest issue, which is there are too many fake shills and sock-puppets all over social media, even here on Lemmy, who will adopt the stupidest or most radical takes on both sides of every issue until bystanders and browsers roll their eyes at the whole thing and tune out.
There are literally millions of people in India and other countries who farm Twitter for a few dollars every month by pushing rage-bait, arguing with people, pretending to be Americans and pretending to care about our future, while sharing propaganda and memes designed to make people hate political involvement.
Our biggest problem is not turnout but engagement and information.
It’s far more clear this time around who is doing what to disrupt the status-quo
Voters seem, with good reason, to hate whichever party is currently in power is another easy way to read this.
Yeah, this unfortunately. I’m a lot more pragmatic and actually try to vote
Yes, lemmy.ml exists.
I blocked that whole instance and still get their shit in my feed.
There are a lot of really miserable, insufferable kids on Lemmy right now seething about this
I will believe you if you can provide just 2 examples.
Because the DNC is emptying out the “victory fund” that neoliberals were stealing from state parties and hoarding to use to convince us to settle for neoliberals in the presidential…
The only reason Republicans are competitive for House/Senate majorities is for decades neoliberals sandbagged the party, and if you didn’t play ball they bankrupted your entire state and let Republicans take it to punish you and set an example to get there states.
That’s how Jeffries and Schumer got elected as majority leaders, going against them would hurt your constituents and the politicians. Whether you were ethical or not there wasn’t really a choice.
That’s been over for a year now
We’re literally a year deep in the largest reinvesture of funds from DNC to state parties, which has let them all run at campaign pevels.
We keep “over performing” because for the first time in 30 years the goal is as many seats as possible instead of a very slim majority so nothing would get done.
Which is why billionaire owned media keeps pretending this is “over performing” and not just what would normally happen if the oligarchs weren’t holding us back by shoving neoliberals down our throats.
But this is gonna keep happening, because it’s a fundamental change to the party that caused it.
if you didn’t play ball they bankrupted your entire state and let Republicans take it to punish you and set an example to get there states.
I don’t think I follow the logic on this, most probably because I’m not sure which funds / fund pools you’re referring to.
Could you explain what you mean a bit more ELI5 level?
The national Democratic fundraising org basically controlled the purse strings that the state levels orga relied on for the last few decades. If the state level wasn’t playing ball, they weren’t getting the funding. This caused a huge loss of Dem seats in state legislatures across the country, which lead to a big gerrymandering push by Republicans to solidify these seats for them.
Leadership changed recently and this devastating policy has been reversed
Yeah, but like, its gonna come with some assumptions that we agree on stuff, and even a simplified version goes back 20 years. So this will be long, but as simple as I can make it.
2007 primary was mostly fair, there was a lot of finger on the scales and implied threats of ending careers for working with Obama. But the neoliberals didn’t take him serious enough to really fuck with it.
That lead to Obama winning the primary, and the neoliberals from Bill’s days who running the DNC to shit themselves. Because if Obama won, he’d name a DNC chair and that was the party.
So the DNC actively worked against Obama even in the general in 2007
Obama, rightfully pissed off made a stupid decision and allowed the neoliberals to hang onto the DNC. However he ran everything thru his own PACs and organizations. Which did a few things:
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Bankrupt the DNC
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Leave state dem parties to fend for themselves.
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Leave the voting members of the DNC nowhere to turn, except double down on neoliberals and corpo. support.
So by the time 2015 runs around, the party is still broke, however the prior chair just gaslights everyone else at the DNC and keeps telling them it’s fine.
In order to fund the DNC enough for the primary, a deal is reached with the Clinton campaign, where they funded the DNC in exchange for final say on anything the DNC said or did, essentially Hillary Clinton cut a check to buy the DNC
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
But, instead of just cashing a check, Hillary also set up a system of “bundling” where you could (in one donation) write a check for the max to a candidate, max to the DNC, and max to all 50 state parties.
“To make it easy” just one single check, you could give to Hillary.
That money became the “Hillary Victory Fund”:
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-leak-clinton-team-deflected-state-cash-concerns-226191
That money was then supposed to be broken down and distributed, which would have been very easy since they were maxing stuff out.
But neoliberals gonna neoliberal, so:
The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.
By contrast, the victory fund has transferred $15.4 million to Clinton’s campaign and $5.7 million to the DNC, which will work closely with Clinton’s campaign if and when she becomes the party’s nominee.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
So anyone that would have given to state parties because they maxed at the DNC or candidate, gave to the victory fund which the DNC and candidate appropriated and used as a single bag of money.
This got passed to Biden, then to Kamala.
The only way your state party could get some crumbs, was appeasing that group of neoliberals. Go against them, and they’d give you start nothing. They didn’t care if Republicans won, because the goal of neoliberalism is to never have enough power to do what voters want.
Now that the goal is “as many seats as possible” and the money is going where it was always supposed to, we’re going to see massive swings like this election.
So like I said, it’s long. But thats honestly as short as it could be and I had to leave a lot out
Makes sense, but couple clarifying questions:
By “ending careers for working with Obama”, you mean the people mostly left over from Bill Clinton’s time as president were threatening people within the Democratic party to not work with Obama?
Obama, rightfully pissed off made a stupid decision and allowed the neoliberals to hang onto the DNC.
Wait so, he was so mad at them that he…let them keep power? That doesn’t make sense. Can you shed any light on why he’d do that?
Man, that Victory Fund sounds corrupt as hell. Thanks for explaining things I was too immature/politically ignorant to pay attention to back in the day.
By “ending careers for working with Obama”, you mean the people mostly left over from Bill Clinton’s time as president were threatening people within the Democratic party to not work with Obama?
They would blackball anyone who worked on a campaign for a progressive.
Like not even in secret backroom deals, they were very upfront about it, if you worked on a primary to challenge a neoliberal incumbent, none of the neoliberals would hire you, it worked for a long time.
Wait so, he was so mad at them that he…let them keep power? That doesn’t make sense. Can you shed any light on why he’d do that?
The most gracious interpretation is he thought the party would wither and die and something would organically replace it…
But I think he was just a petty dick.
What he should have done was hand the keys to someone who would at least try to fix it, do the stuff Martin is now. Instead it cost us a decade of progress.
-
for the first time in 30 years
Dean had the 50 state strategy in 2006. Which paid off in 2008, with the largest Dem win in generations.
That of course was quickly squandered.
What got us 2008 was people actually wanted to vote for Obama because he was charismatic and his policy matched what voters wanted…
Something Dean and the DNC tried to stop from happening.
That was in spite of the neoliberals, but to be honest I’d never imagined someone would even attempt to give them credit for that
It wasn’t really Dean - though as an ex-Deanite, maybe I’m biased.
Dean was elected in spite of lots of the Democratic establishment. And they did oppose Obama (for little reason it turned out, he didn’t block them).
With Obama, who I volunteered for in 2008, I can say for sure lots of the support thought that we were cleaning house of the Dem leadership, only to see Larry Summers and the like immediately brought back in. My big question is really if the fix was always in, or if Obama got push back and immediately gave up. Either seems likely.
When’s the last time a district swung by nearly 40 points? That’s nuts. Good, but wild.
For context, here’s how the elections have gone down since 2011 for that seat:
Year Democrat Republican Independent 2011 86.1 13.9 2015 46 18.8 25.6 2019 100 2023 100 2026 62 38
Not exactly a huge pro-democrat swing. This is actually the strongest contested result the republicans have had for this seat…
It’s not really a swing when it’s a completely different office, especially with trump. There are many places were a local Democrat and Trump won in the same ballot, including this one.
Also, the incumbent won, it’s literally not a flip.
I didn’t call it a flip, but thanks for the reminder.
You called it a swing, and it isn’t that either since they literally elected the same person they elected last time.
Martinez campaigned on a platform focused on affordable insurance, stronger local infrastructure, and expanded access to health care, including mental health and substance-abuse services. She also focused on government transparency, support for public education, and advocacy for working families.
It’s almost like if you focus on the stuff that’s most important to the vast majority of voters, you’ll get more votes. Hmm…
What’s hilarious is that all feels like bottom of the barrel stuff, like we should just be doing that stuff by default.
That’s why America is stuck in the mud, it goes forward in progress and back to revisionism. It gives with one hand and takes back with the other. This is why a two party system is fraught with paradox. More lines of ascension means more dialogue and progress moves more steadily forward instead of being jerked back and forth. One party is not the solution any but those in power should wish for. There is a reason no one is ruled by a monarchy anymore.
Yeah Republicans are still trying to pull back bullshit from the New Deal.
Bro republicans are trying to pull back shit from the civil war
💯
Be aware: Newsweek spent the lead-up to the 2024 election telling us that we had nothing to worry about and that Harris was going to win.
This has been a consistent placating of the non-MAGAts.
Nothing is more poison to the MAGA brand than Trump being in office. It’s why he lost the election in 2020. We saw the burning dumpster fire all around us and went NO THANKS
A third of us said no thanks, another third was all “yes, lemme lick more boot!”, and the last third couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.
Fuck every single protest non voter. This shit is as much on their shoulders as the maga faithful, the lazy pieces of shit.
Mostly I see people who were desperate to get rid of Trump in 2020 showing their short memories by going back to non-voting. I don’t think the actual number of protest-non voters was very high.
Don’t blame them at all though. The DNC is squarely to blame. They made a series of terrible decisions and ended up with a bad candidate running a bad campaign and thought they could still win solely on how shitty their opponent was.
“Comfortably”? A 10% margin is considered a landslide. Martinez won by 24 points.
Blatant political bias by Newsweek.
I’ve been burned too many times for real predictions, but I hope we’re about to need all new words for “blowout” soon.
Polling currently makes Democrats slight favourites, assuming election tampering efforts are not too successful.
You aren’t getting midterms, voting is so 2024.
Pushing this narrative gives the fascists permission. If you’ve already accepted it won’t happen, they feel safer stopping them.
Cut it out
I am so tired of this comment. Yes, I’m also worried about it. But this tired cliche doesn’t tell anyone anything they don’t already know, doesn’t raise any alarms or call anyone to any action, doesn’t do anything but spread more doomerism into an already oversaturated doomspace. It’s useless content, on the level of replying “first!” to a YouTube video circa 2013.
I’m sorry that you had to be the recipient of this tirade. But I swear, I see this comment several times every day, and I can’t help wondering, “so what do you want me to do about it? What are YOU doing about it?” No. We have to assume there will be an election until there isn’t, and then we have to respond. Until then, we have to help each other out and keep on doing what we can. We definitely don’t have to comment the same low-effort doom every time midterm elections are mentioned; it just demoralizes people and makes the Trump fascism machine seem inevitable and unstoppable.
Why miss the opportunity to say “bigly,” and rub in that bastard’s fascist face?
Why miss the opportunity to say “bigly,”
Because the goal isn’t to sound stupid?
While I don’t want to dampen the enthusiasm to much, this State House district has voted Democratic since 2011. So not that much of a surprise, even though good.
This is the kind of result that the pedofile in chief will NOT consider a “honest” one. Just in case you were wondering.
What was her platform?
Martinez campaigned on a platform focused on affordable insurance, stronger local infrastructure, and expanded access to health care, including mental health and substance-abuse services. She also focused on government transparency, support for public education, and advocacy for working families. A longtime community advocate, Martinez pointed to her record of grassroots engagement, including volunteering with local food pantries and assisting families in need, as central to her approach in representing District 60.
Thank you. I need a better ad/pop-up blocker on mobile. Newsweek is awful.
Firefox Mobile works with uBlock Origin
Ah, so maybe people actually prefer that to the Republican platform of “we’ll take all your money and give it to billionaires, deny you healthcare and education, kidnap your friends and family and, if you complain, shoot you in the street.”
Radical! Who aside from ordinary people would benefit from such plans?!?!
