A Rare Sight: A Competitive Race in Deep-Red Tennessee

Tennessee's special election looked close and weirdly normal. Republican Matt Van Epps won the special House election in Tennessee's 7th district yesterday. This was the special election in Tennessee's 7th district. But the real story isn't a shocker, win or loss, it's how routine this all looks in American politics. According to the New York Times, Van Epsby, Democrat Ben by about 9 points in a district Donald Trump carried by 22 points in 2024. So that's a huge 13 point change. That double digit shift toward Democrats matches what we've seen in other 2025 special elections. The President's party slowly bleeding support before the midterms. Now, historically nothing unusual there. The party that wins the White House almost always struggles in the next midterms and often the next presidential cycle as well. That's where Trump and Republicans are now. So yes, Republicans held a deep red seat after a Trump led multimillion dollar rescue mission. And yes, Democrats lost while running far ahead of their 2024 baseline. In other words, this is what normal American politics looks like in 2025. Okay, what's the real message of the special election in Tennessee in 20? Message is muddled. Trump carried the district by 22% a year ago and the Republican nominee only won by 9% this time. That's a huge drop of Republican favorability. But that's normal. When one party controls the White House, they tend to lose the next special election. But here's the thing. There is a chance the Democrats blew this. If they had had a candidate who seemed more moderate or even slightly conservative for a district like this, they might have actually won. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So again, anyone who tells you this election is a clear cut sign of what is exactly going to happen in 2025 I believe, isn't being honest with you. Now, by historical measures, the party in power in the White House loses special elections for the House the next year and does lose a lot of seats in the general election. So based on in the two year cycle after that. So based on normal historical patterns, yeah, it does look like Democrats would retake the House, especially since there's just a small, small margin of a handful of more Republicans than there are Democrats. But a lot of things can happen between now and 2026. So many things have happened, so many destructions of norms have happened in our society in just the last 10 months. I think to boldly predict that there even will be elections in 2026 is really acting more on faith than on any evidence based on how our country's been run for the last 10 months. So I'm going to give it to you straight. There are Democrats out there and liberal pundits saying this is a sign that the world is caving in on Donald Trump. He's uniquely weak, he's uniquely failed, he, he's uniquely losing support. And that's just not true. Regardless of whether you want that or not, it's not at all unusual for the White House and their party to lose by somewhat significant margins in the next election. Now, 13 points, I won't kid you. Nobody's really happy at the Republican National Committee today or the Republican Congressional Committee. No one's really celebrated, especially considering how much work they had to do, how much money they had to spend to see a 13 point shift to the Democratic nominee on what normally would be an easy, easy blowout. Landslide win for the Republican. And the traditional metric for a landslide in Politics is a 10 point, a double digit spread. It didn't quite get there. It got to 9%. Now, let's keep in mind the backdrop. Trump's overall approval ratings are as high as the low 40s, which is historically very low. Other polls show him at 36, 35%, which is extraordinarily low for a president. So it would be odd that someone running on the same ticket of a president with 35 or even 40% approval rating doesn't see a lot of drop of support. Now, the Republicans spent almost $6 million on ads on this race. This was a heavily funded and the Democrats spent plenty too. Now, interesting thing about the Democratic nominee, and forgive me, I just don't know how to pronounce her name. Ben. I believe it's spelled B E H N. She positioned herself and certainly was positioned in the eyes of the electorate as more on the progressive side. She campaigned with aoc, who is anathema to many conservatives and even moderates in a place like Tennessee. Not quite sure that was the best strategy. Also in the opposition research, they found some comments from this nominee questioning back in 2020 the wisdom of fund fully funding the police. I don't know if she officially endorsed the defund the police movement, but there were some comments out there that kind of sort of suggested she was very sympathetic to that whole defund the police, which had a moment not with Biden, not with senior level Democrats in the House or the Senate, but a few Democrats and certainly those who positioned themselves on the left were openly espousing the need to defund the police. Okay, can't be denied. So she got sort of pigeonholed into that situation. So it's making a lot of Democrats ask, what if we'd had a nominee like this Span Burger and some of these other recent Democrats who won just a few weeks ago in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats who really position themselves as centrist moderates, pro defense, pro military, pro police, what would have happened? Now, regardless of what your political beliefs are, there is such a thing as data. There is such a thing as polling. And the polls do in fact show that in congressional districts around the country that are split more or less evenly between Republicans and Democrats and how they votes, that the more conservative Democrat, the more moderate Democrat tends to win more frequently than someone who is seen as being on the more progressive side. I'm not telling you the Democratic Party needs to switch and move further to the right. I'm telling you the data shows that when Democrats who are positioned and seen as very moderate run in swing districts, they tend to do very well. Now, this isn't technically even a swing district. They were hoping to make it a swing district. It didn't become one. But a lot of Democrats are scratching their heads saying, wow, if we did this well in the Deep south with a Republican district where Trump won by 22% with a woman, number one, and I'm not saying that in a disparaging way, but among a lot of conservatives, especially conservative men in the south, that's a little suspect. If we're running with a woman who has a name that not everyone can even pronounce, who has aligned herself with AOC and has said things suggestive that she is sympathetic to defunding the police, if someone like that could get within nine points, then someone who is seen as an Andy Beshear type, a moderate Democrat from, from Kentucky, or a governor elect Spanberger, someone like that had run, maybe we could have won by two or three points. So there are a lot of Democrats thinking this was a lost opportunity. So, again, I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist, calling it like it is. And I'm here to tell you, nobody's really happy today. I mean, both parties are putting on a smiley face, as they tend to do. They're trying to make things look good and make their funders feel good, their donors feel good and boost the morale of the troops. But frankly, neither party is very happy. Republicans are sweating, saying, wow, this wasn't even a good opposition candidate and we lost 13 points of where we were a year ago. This can't be good. And the Democrats are thinking, oh, we really could have won this if we had been more aggressive at mobilizing around a true, true moderate candidate. So it's not really a big win in a big clause of celebration, frankly, for either party today.