Two important local elections produced great news for the Democratic Party.
In Iowa, a special election was held for a state Senate seat in a solidly Republican district that Trump won by 11.5 points in 2024. Democrat Caitlin Drey won, overturning a Republican supermajority in the state senate. Drey won by more than 10%. There was a 20-point swing to the Democrats.
In a ruby red district in Georgia, seven candidates vied for a state Senate seat. Democrat Debra Shirley came in first with 39% of the vote. There will be a runoff on September 23 and she will oppose the top-scoring Republican, who won 17% of the vote.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
so much gerrymandering to do. So little time.
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Thanks so much for the good news! A lot of us really needed to hear about red states beginning to turn blue, since that’s a sign people are waking up. It sends a strong message about reality to MAGAts, too, despite their efforts to spin everything in their favor. Also, then voter suppression won’t be enough to steal elections when they’re targeting just blue districts!
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I think the actual vote distribution in GA was Shirley getting 39% of the vote, not 49%. Still a good thing – rather an improvement from the 70-30 split in the ’24 general election here – but very different from verging on majority.
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My typo
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Let’s hope it’s an indication of things to come! Quick note: I think there are two small name typos—Catelin Drey (Iowa) and Debra Shigley (Georgia). Thanks for covering these races!
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If they are gerrymandering according to the pre-Trump elections, my guess is that, for the near future, many of their present calculations will have changed color.
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After claiming to his Cabinet yesterday that “A lot of people are saying maybe we’d like a dictator” and then seeing today what happened with the vote on Tuesday in red districts that he previously won in Iowa and Georgia, a normal person would wake up and say, “Oops, maybe not!”
I guess we can only hope that not everyone on his team is living in fantasy land and someone will speak up and point out the matter to him, as well as his decline in approval ratings: “Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Underwater in All but Three Polls Last Week”
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-underwater-polls-2118741
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Did you see the video of Trump’s Cabinet meeting yesterday? Each Cabinet member obsequiescely praised him. as if he were Stalin or Mao.
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No, I didn’t watch it because I can easily remember how that happened in his Cabinet meetings the previous time he was in office.
I suspect those meetings might even be scripted in advance, like the play acting on the Apprentice was. That is so sick when you are talking about our government and it’s impact on the lives of real people. It just makes me want to shout, “Hey bub, this is the real world, not so-called reality TV! Genuine people live and die according to what the nation’s leaders say, decide and do as a result of those kinds of meetings!” But he doesn’t care enough to even try to understand how important that truly is, because getting personal compliments matter soooo much more to him.
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“I guess we can only hope that not everyone on his team is living in fantasy land”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ad infinitum. By definition anyone who is a tRump cultista, i.e., everyone on his team, lives in an irreal fantasy land. There is no getting around that FACT.
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I’m sure you are right. This time he’d have had to vet at least some of his Cabinet members the way he did last time for someone who is knowledgeable and ethical to squeeze by and enter his realm. Surely he was much more focused this time on whether they are fanatical sycophants willing to bow down and bless his every whim –however immoral, illegal or traitorous that may be. There’s an abundance of them today so there’s really no doubt that he got precisely what he wanted onboard this time around.
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