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Last night, we had an election for who would represent Tennessee’s 7th congressional district at the federal level. This election was for a seat in the House of Representatives.
It was a very closely watched election because it is a bellwether of just how satisfied voters are with the right-wing politicians currently in power.
While Virginia and New York were very successful for Democrats (the left-wing), with someone who has voiced support for defunding the police (yes, he apologized for this later) winning the New York mayoral race.
While these were notable victories for Democrats in 2025, both happened in very blue states: Virginia last voted a Republican for president in 2004 and we have to go all the way back to 1984 to find New York voting for a Republican. One could make the argument that these victories mainly show greater polarization in today’s social-media driven political climate, with blue voters voting more blue. Perhaps red voters will vote more red come the midterms next year.
Or maybe not.
Tennessee’s 7th congressional district is very red; the last two congressional elections have been 60-38% blowouts, with the blue (Democrat) candidate losing by 22 points. So, if the polarization theory is true, we would expect the blue candidate to lose by even more points, perhaps having a 65-33% blowout.
That’s not what happened.
While Matt Van Epps did win, it was not a blowout. It was a 54-45% victory, with him leading only by 9 points in a district where Republicans have previously won by over 20 points. At one point, there was even a blue mirage, where the blue candidate was actually leading Van Epps by over five points.
The Democrat’s (i.e. blue) candidate, one Behn, is no blue dog moderate. She has chased ICE agents, filming confrontations with them.
Indeed, one very left-leaning site says that this looks really bad for Republicans, and with good reason: A nationwide 15-point move leftward would be a bloodbath for Republicans in the midterms next year.
Based on the elections we have had this year, it looks like a blue tide is rising after Trump’s victory in 2024.
A few quick hits about the current political situation:
The Republicans have now officially become the party of low-propensity voters. Trump was successful because he was able to tap into a certain demographic that was previously resistant to participating in elections, but to appeal to them he had to sacrifice a significant number of reliable participants. I'm not talking about the mythical never-Trump Republicans, but suburban moderates, swing voters, and independents. I've pointed this out before, but Mt. Lebanon, a wealthy Pittsburgh suburb, used to be reliably Republican area and, while it had been shifting leftward for several years prior, the emergence of Trump turned it into the kind of place with rainbow flags and "In this house we believe" signs. Directly south of there, Upper St. Clair is one of the preeminent "new money" suburbs and was even more reliably Republican until recently, but now is more like 50/50. South of there, Peters Township is wealthy and still reliably Republican, but by that point you're outside of Allegheny County and on the edge of what can plausibly be described as suburban. Exchanging wealthy, reliable voters for poor, unreliable ones may have been a winning strategy for Trump to eke out narrow victories in presidential elections, but the results have been disappointing without Trump on the ballot, and it's unclear how much of a hit the GOP will take in a presidential election without him.
The Democrats' much-maligned caving on the shutdown doesn't look as bad in retrospect. With real pain on the horizon, allowing it to continue indefinitely was a risky prospect, and getting a vote on ACA subsidies was a bigger win than most commentators gave it credit for. Throughout most of the shutdown, the subsidy issue was more of a theoretical problem, with open enrollment only beginning on November 1. When the issue comes to a vote, Open enrollment will have been in full swing for over a month, and cost will be a real issue for a lot of people. Trump has signaled he'd be willing to support some kind of extension, but Republicans in Congress can't really support it. They made their intransigence the central issue of the shutdown, and by voting for it they'd be admitting that they shut down the government for petty reasons. Furthermore, they were trying to scuttle Obamacare from Day One, and now they'e being asked to save it. It's a damned-if-you do situation.
Affordability is still the biggest issue. For any politician, it's a knotty problem, because there's not much that can be done to effectively combat high prices. For Trump it's worse, however, because he took active steps to make the problem worse. The tariffs are the most obvious example, but the ACA subsidies come into play here as well. This is a gift for Democrats, because it not only gives them an issue to run on, but a concrete policy plan; vowing to eliminate the tariffs is something they can actually do that will have some positive effect.
One of the biggest problems I see with Democratic politicians, at least locally, is the complete lack of any ground game. They tend to do well in elections that are actually competitive, but when it comes to reliable Republican seats, the candidates are often whoever is willing to run, and they aren't given much in the way of support from the party. They're basically sacrificial lambs. It's understandable that the party doesn't want to waste resources on races they're sure to lose, but complete abandonment makes it much more difficult to capitalize on potential shifts in opinion, as does allowing unserious candidates to run. I'm talking about people who file the paperwork but don't do anything to promote themselves. No knocking on doors, no appearances at community events, limited presence. They win the people who vote straight Democrat but can't make any inroads with anyone else. This is stuff that is more about commitment of time than of money, and while it's unlikely to be enough to win any given election, it may make enough of a dent to set the table for the future.
Behn's nomination is a textbook example of this. There were better candidates in the primary, but the district was seen as a lost cause and they didn't get any party support. The DSA progressive types seized on Behn being one of their own and poured money into her campaign, allowing her to win the nomination with 27% of the vote. The other candidates split with about 24% each. I'm not one to think that money decides elections, but when they're that close and when the difference in resources is that large, I'm inclined to believe that kicking in some support may have been enough to take one of the others over the top. This isn't to say that they would have won in the general, but with someone that far to the left closing that much of a gap, it isn't beyond the realm of possibility to think that it could have been a lot closer than it was.
Trump's habit of doubling down on unpopular policies following losses beyond his control comes across as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. After a court ruled that SNAP benefits could be withheld, he not only appealed the decision, but said he wanted the states who had paid benefits to return the money. I have no doubt that if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, he's reinstate them with some other justification. He could use these as offramps that avoid the embarrassment of having to retract them himself, and take the issues off the table for the next election. Instead he decides to keep them alive while providing even more ammunition for his opponents.
Incompetence is another angle of attack that the Democrats haven't been taking full advantage of. They want to focus on the vindictive nature of the revenge prosecutions, but Trump can easily counter that by pointing out how he was prosecuted himself for spurious reasons. While those prosecutions certainly had their share of incompetence, one resulted in an almost ruinous damage award and one resulted in a felony conviction. Trump doesn't have any clear wins on this front and a lot of embarrassing losses. I wrote about this last week, but again, he keeps doubling down on this. After the court ruled that Lindsey Halligan's appointment was illegal, the Justice Department told the Eastern District of Virginia that they were to continue signing her name on pleadings. The upshot is that there could be legitimate prosecutions that will now be jeopardized because Trump wanted to make a point.
I don't see Ukraine or Gaza playing much of a role in the election. These aren't wars with direct US involvement, and there are intra-party differences of opinion. For Trump to move the needle on Ukraine he would have to negotiate a deal that was extremely favorable to the Ukrainians, and I doubt that will be forthcoming. Ukraine isn't winning the war, though they may be able to hold out for quite a while. The most likely outcome, aside from a continued stalemate, is some kind of Russian victory, and that doesn't really help anyone. Gaza is technically a settled issue at this point even if the war is realistically continuing, and I don't see it being an issue next year absent major new developments.
Trump calling for Congressmen to be executed for sedition and the various other outrages we talk about a lot here aren't going to play a major role in the elections. These are the kinds of things people get fired up about for a couple weeks and then forget about.
Epstein is an interesting one. I don't see there being anything in the files that will hurt Trump that much, but his reluctance to release the files suggests that he may drag this out as an issue. I suspect that a significant amount of information is going to be withheld due to the ongoing investigation or national security exceptions, and this will keep things in the news. I'm on record as saying that this is one of the stupider scandals of our time, but it seems to have real traction and Trump seems committed to making sure it doesn't go away.
The MTG resignation announcement and hints of other GOP House members considering resigning points to a larger problem with the Republican party than is being talked about. The one thing about the Tweet that struck me was "They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies". Massie and other GOP members have gone on the record about how they are treated like garbage and expected to be nothing more than rubber stamps for Trump, but that quote seems to hint at a deeper problem, where they aren't only expected to do Trump's bidding but to give him credit for their own accomplishments. The current wave of retirements leading to open seats isn't good for them, but what may be worse is if this level of party control carries over into the campaigns themselves. Having to run in spite of an incumbent's unpopular policies isn't ideal but it's doable; just accentuate the positive and run on your own record on issues that are winners and are important to the district. But what if they're expected to run on the issues that Trump thinks is important? What if they have to talk about how great tariffs are, and how their purpose in congress is to push through the Trump agenda? It's been no secret that Trump doesn't give a shit about the party as a whole or what happens after he leaves office, only the glorification of his own massive ego. If Trump tries to direct House campaigns to fit with this mold, it could be a recipe for disaster.
If there's any kind of military action in Venezuela it's over for Trump. I don't think this will happen, but it's pretty clear that Rubio wants it to happen, and a couple targeted airstrikes won't be enough to remove Maduro from power. A sustained military operation would require additional appropriation from congress, and the last time a president was able to get that was in 2003, when 9/11 was still fresh in everyone's memory. Again, it's a damned-if-you do situation for Republicans, because support for such a war is tepid at best, even among Republicans, but Trump would expect his rubber stamp, especially if there are already troops on the ground. Ending the war would just be another no-brainer issue for democrats to run on.
Well, no. SNAP ran out of money because Congress didn’t allocate any. A judge ordered Trump to pay SNAP anyways. “With what money?” Trump asked the judge for guidance. “Pay it,” the judge ordered, without any guidance. At the time the shutdown negotiation ended the admin was being ordered to take the money from school lunch programs.
Maybe your interpretation is how the public actually interprets this issue, because who really cares about the minutiae of rogue judges when Trump’s face is right there. But that is an interpretation, it’s not a neutral statement of fact, and in taking one party side it’s likely that something close to half of the electorate disagrees with you.
I think your post here is riddled with such interpretation errors. That’s fine, I guess, we don’t have to have the same opinions here, but I suspect this kind of analysis would have predicted 10 of the last 5 Democratic victories.
Note that the order to make full payment was stayed by the Supreme Court... in the person of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The stay was later extended 8-1 by the Supreme Court... oddly enough, the dissenter was Jackson.
It as apparent, as @FCfromSSC often points out, that the court system is broken. The Constitution is pretty clear about not spending funds which have not been appropriated.
Yet not only did at least two District judges, but the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, rule that the administration has to "find the money". Yes, including from the school lunch program.
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