Democrats in Pennsylvania

Since the 2024 election, legacy media pundits and many establishment Democrats have complained that Democrats focused too heavily on “cultural issues” — meaning everything from abortion to social justice, which happens to impact the most vulnerable and loyal voters in the Democratic base. They’ve suggested this focus was ruining the Democratic Party “brand” among swaths of the electorate, including working-class whites and rural voters. It turns out that all it took was a couple of years of atrocious malfeasance and incompetent Trump regime rule (including disastrous tariffs), some dogged Democratic grassroots organizing, and a crop of top-flight Democratic candidates to reverse the trend.

Democrat Brandon Dukes scored a narrow victory in last week’s special election in the Pennsylvania 12^th General Assembly, an overwhelmingly White Pittsburgh suburban district that has not sent a Democrat to the state house since the 1990s, and that voted for Donald Trump by 18 points in 2024. The Pennsylvania Capital Star reported that the win was “a major boon for Pennsylvania Democrats, who are hoping to build momentum going into a series of key elections this fall.” Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Eugene DePasquale told the paper:

Pennsylvanians across the political spectrum are sick and tired of Republicans’ chaotic, corrupt, and cost-raising agenda — and they’re ready to reject them at the polls and elect Democrats up and down the ballot in historic fashion.

If Democrats can keep the state house, re-elect Governor Josh Shapiro, and flip 3 state senate seats, they will have a trifecta for the first time in decades.