Republicans Are in Trouble, but Democrats Could Blow It. Last night’s Tennessee special election gave both Democrats and Republicans something to worry about.
Posted by Sine_Fine_Belli
Republicans Are in Trouble, but Democrats Could Blow It. Last night’s Tennessee special election gave both Democrats and Republicans something to worry about.
Posted by Sine_Fine_Belli
5 Comments
“Republicans witnessed their ruby red gerrymandered +20 district shift by **13 points**, here’s why thats bad for dems”
But really, the midterms are a year away, we literally have no fucking clue what next November brings and at this point all anyone can offer are guesses.
No one has ever gone broke by appealing to the neuroticism of American liberals.
“Why a 14 point over performance shows that democracy in America is done”
Beyond parody lmao
I couldn’t read the full article because poor but I did see this chunk:
“But last night’s outcome also offers Democrats a cautionary tale. An off-year special election in December is precisely the kind of low-turnout situation in which the party’s highly educated base currently dominates. In such races, Democrats probably need to run up the score by even more than 13 points before they can have a real shot at winning both houses of Congress next year.”
This is actually wrong. [CNN reported that turnout was comparable to the 2022 midterms](https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/02/politics/tennessee-special-election-republicans-midterms-analysis). I think specifically, but I do not have a source, is this special election was 92% turnout compared to 2022. If it was 100% turnout it’s likely Epps would have still won by single digits and that’s with a full midterm election turnout.
So I’d say the 13 point swing is actually more impressive than it looks on paper because this was essentially a midterm election, not a special election. Unless turnout in 2026 is *well* above 2022, I’d say the Dems are still sitting pretty good with the result and turnout we saw
Maybe the article addresses what I mention but I dunno I can’t read it lol
> Behn, a 36-year-old former community organizer, has the kind of progressive background that might not hurt in a Democratic primary but can become a real liability in a general election—including an extensive trail of quotes that ended up being used against her. She told a Nashville interviewer in 2020, “I’m a very radical person.” In now-deleted tweets from the same year, she advocated for dissolving the Nashville police department and wished a “Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.” She said on a podcast that she hated country music, bachelorette parties, and the city of Nashville itself, and suggested on a different episode that “birthers”—a gender-neutral term for “men and women who can give birth”—should refuse to procreate as a form of “collective bargaining.”
> Republican groups seized on those quotes in the final few weeks of the campaign, spending millions of dollars on attack ads to make sure as many voters in the district as possible heard them.
People are quick to meme on this article because of the headline but I do recommend [reading](https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/tennessee-special-election/685131/) the full article because it makes a good point.
Democrats very likely underperformed in the race due to the comments of their candidate. It is a huge risk next year that progressives/bad candidates win the primaries especially in moderate areas and lose winnable elections.