Good evening and welcome back to your evening edition of the Democratic Wins Media newsletter. Tonight’s edition is about the votersvoters — and what they keep doing every time they get the chance. In Butler County, Pennsylvania, of all places, voters just flipped a state House seat that Republicans held for 27 years. Republican primary voters keep rejecting Trump’s hand-picked candidates. And in Alaska, a Democrat just finished first — ahead of the sitting Republican senator. The polls we cover every night are snapshots; these are actual ballots showing the real movement that’s powering the midterm blue wave that’s on the way.
Here’s what we’re covering tonight:
Democrats flip a Trump+18 Pennsylvania seat that Republicans held since 1999 — by 88 votes in Butler County
The “cheat sheet” double standard: the note-card photo that would have been a Fox News emergency under Biden is now a non-story under Trump
Trump’s endorsement losing streak hits double digits — nearly matching his entire 2022 total, with primaries still left
Democratic Wins of the Day: Scroll to the bottom for your daily list of Democrats who won the day
Before the news, a word about why this newsletter exists. The Ellison family now controls CBS News and CNN with Bari Weiss in charge. Bezos owns the Washington Post. Murdoch runs Fox and Roku. The billionaires are buying every outlet that could hold them accountable. Democratic Wins Media is the alternative: we’re fully reader-funded, editorially independent, and will never be purchased. If you have been reading on a free subscription, this evening is the moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Subscribe or upgrade right now.
Democrat Brandon Dukes has flipped Pennsylvania’s 12th state House District, winning Tuesday’s special election by 88 votes — 8,434 to Republican Scott Timko’s 8,346 on unofficial returns — in a Butler County district Republicans have held since 1999. The scale of the upset is hard to overstate: Trump carried this exurban Pittsburgh district by 18 points in 2024, the Republican state representative won it by 30 points that same year, and county officials confirmed no automatic recount applies. Dukes, a commercial loan administrator at TD Bank, put it simply: “We just flipped a Trump plus-18 seat, and we flipped a red seat that’s been red for almost 30 years. We made history.” It’s the first flip in 17 Pennsylvania state House special elections since 2023, and it extends Democrats’ streak of special-election over-performance nationwide — Democrats have outrun Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by an average of five points across more than 200 state and federal contests since Trump took office, per Politico’s analysis cited by Axios. Gov. Josh Shapiro celebrated the win, and Rep. Brendan Boyle — who once served alongside the district’s famously MAGA former representative Daryl Metcalfe — called the result “a political earthquake.”
Why it matters: Butler County is the beating heart of Trump country — and its voters just elected a Democrat. Special elections aren’t perfect predictors, but this is the sixth Democratic state-legislative flip of the year against zero Republican flips, and every one of them was decided by actual voters, not pollsters.
By the numbers: 48 points — the swing from the GOP’s 30-point 2024 margin in this district to Tuesday’s Democratic win.
A Reuters photo from Monday’s Oval Office event shows Trump clutching staff-prepared briefing cards — with photos of his two guests and step-by-step instructions — as he honored a 16-year-old California lifeguard and the child he rescued. Progressive commentator David Pakman spent Tuesday’s episode walking through what would have happened if the president in that photo were Joe Biden: the cards circled in red on Fox News, run continuously, with right-wing influencers demanding to know whether the president knew where he was and, in Pakman’s words, “some disgraced TV doctor” diagnosing dementia from 3,000 miles away. Instead: silence. The double standard lands harder because concerns about Trump’s fitness are now mainstream and measurable. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this year found 61% of Americans — including 30% of Republicans — agree Trump has “become erratic with age,” and a Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos survey found 56% say he lacks the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president. As Pakman put it: “When Biden held a card, it was a national emergency. And when Trump holds one, he’s a very busy guy.”
Why it matters: We’re not diagnosing anyone — that was always the point. The same conservative media that turned Biden’s note cards into a years-long fitness referendum has gone quiet now that the president using photo cards to remember his guests is their own. The standard was never about health. It was about power.
By the numbers: 30% of Republicans agree Trump has “become erratic with age,” per Reuters/Ipsos.
Trump’s endorsement losing streak reached a milestone Tuesday night: with Florida’s primaries closing out, ten Trump-endorsed Republicans have now lost their primary races this cycle — one shy of his total for all of 2022, with the season not yet over. The latest casualties: Catalina Lauf in Florida’s 19th District and scandal-plagued Rep. Cory Mills, who lost his primary by more than 13 points despite Trump’s backing. In Wyoming, Trump’s pick for governor, Megan Degenfelder, lost by more than 15 points. They join a growing list of failed Trump gubernatorial picks — Burt Jones in Georgia, Randy Feenstra in Iowa, Pam Evette in South Carolina, and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell in Minnesota — plus House losses including close ally Andy Ogles in Tennessee. After Mills lost, Trump claimed on Truth Social that he had told Mills to drop out — “but he wouldn’t listen.” For context: only two of Trump’s endorsees lost primaries in 2018, and just four in all of 2024. His revenge campaigns against disloyal incumbents still landed — Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn and Rep. Thomas Massie all lost their primaries — but primary voters are his most loyal electorate, and even they are increasingly ignoring him.
Why it matters: Trump’s endorsement was the single most valuable currency in Republican politics for a decade. When the most engaged, most MAGA slice of the electorate starts rejecting his picks at five times the rate of his last midterm as president — while he sits at a record-low 33% approval — the currency is devaluing at exactly the wrong moment for his party.
By the numbers: 10 losses and counting — versus just 2 Trump-endorsed primary losers at this point in the 2018 cycle.
Leaked GOP memo admits Sherrod Brown has them scared in Ohio. A private NRSC memo to top AI companies, obtained by Axios, warns that Brown has made data centers a “centerpiece” of his campaign against appointed Sen. Jon Husted — and pleads with the industry to rehabilitate its own image, warning that “if he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice.” The party’s own campaign arm calls the race a dead heat; Fox News polling has Brown up 8, with 65% of Ohio voters — including 59% of Republicans — opposing an AI data center in their area.
Mark Kelly torches Trump over stranded USS Abraham Lincoln sailors. After Trump told a reporter the carrier’s nearly nine-month deployment hadn’t gone on too long — insisting the opposite, that it should go longer — the Navy combat veteran fired back on MS NOW that Trump has spent much of his adult life “sitting on gold toilets” and doesn’t understand hardship or the people who serve. Kelly described sailors jumping overboard, food shortages, and a grandmother telling him her grandson aboard has lost 20-25 pounds — and he’s led senators in a letter demanding the administration bring the crew home with a real return date.
Mary Peltola finishes FIRST in Alaska’s Senate primary — ahead of the Republican incumbent. The former congresswoman topped the all-party primary field with 48% to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s roughly 43%, advancing to November’s ranked-choice general election with more raw votes than the two-term incumbent. Peltola — who outran Kamala Harris by double digits in her narrow 2024 House loss — is running as a fiercely independent Alaskan, with her campaign declaring “Mary isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48.”
Polls are opinions, but ballots are facts — and from Butler County to Alaska to Trump’s own primaries, the facts keep breaking one way. If you’re thrilled that Democrats are kicking ass across the country, subscribe and share our newsletter. We’ll keep bringing you the news you want to hear.
Democratic Wins Media has no billionaire owner and no corporate sponsors — we answer to readers, and only readers. That independence is why we can bring you the Butler County earthquake, the note-card double standard the right-wing media won’t touch, and Trump’s double-digit endorsement collapse — the stories billionaire-owned newsrooms skip. We’re running way behind our paid subscribers goal for August, and every single upgrade goes straight back into this work. If tonight’s edition was useful to you, today’s a good day to become a paid subscriber. Upgrade now →
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.