The Republicans won a special South Carolina House election on Tuesday, but the Democrats overperformed by double digits compared to their performance in the 2024 presidential election.
Republican John Lastinger won 62.3 percent of the vote in the election for the 88th district seat, beating Democrat Chuck Hightower, who secured 37.7 percent. This gave the Republicans a net win of +24.6 percent over the Democrats.
This represents an improved performance for the Democrats compared to the 2024 presidential election, when President Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the district by 67 percent to 32 percent, according to The State newspaper. In that election, the Republicans won with a net margin of +35 percentage points.
We don’t have enough time for ‘positive trends’ to be worth much.
Remember when W was the worst president ever and the Democrats made huge gains and then took over the government permanently and got everything done they wanted?
Yeah me neither.
No, but during the eight years after him, we did get:
Saying they didn’t get “everything done [that] they wanted” is disingenuous to the achievements accomplished and shows a lack of understanding of how progress is made.
But my point isn’t that things were fixed, but that they’ll never be fixed. There will be a slight leftward swing, there will be a couple minor victories that nobody is really happy about, and then a huge rightward shift that undoes all or most of it.
Because this has been the pattern for my entire fucking life and it’s getting older than I feel.
Yes, progress is fragile and needs constant defending. This is an important observation you have made.
We had an intact election system for reasonably fair mid terms and a pres election for that to happen. I am absolutely not confident America will get fair enough elections in the midterms in 10 months, nevermind 3 years from now. All while potentially irreversible structural changes are taking place making it impossible to remove the right wing from any branch of government. I don’t think waiting for the presidential election or for the trends we see now to pan out is anything to pin hopes on.
There isn’t a single Republican in the House who I want to see stay in office. That said, trying to get every single one out just isn’t going to happen. A “positive trend” doesn’t mean anything in districts as strong as this one, but there are plenty of purple districts where that positive trend means a flipped seat. And all the gerrymandering to secure more seats means each seat is less safe (those blue voters didn’t disappear, even if their district essentially did) so that could backfire as well.
We have the time we have.
What is, is.
What will be, will be.
Everyone gets it. I was responding to just such a statement.
Tautology