Could This TN Special Election Help End Mike Johnson's Speakership BEFORE The Midterms?
Reckon let's try!
Happy Thanksgiving week!
Republicans are in absolute disarray, everybody hates Donald Trump, his healthcare “plan” fell apart before it got out the gate, looks like Trump’s gerrymandering thing is just yet another one of his wet sloppy turds, everybody is a rat who wants to abandon a sinking ship, House Republicans are leaking to Punchbowl that there are more resignations coming, Rep. Don Bacon said out loud that he thought about resigning over Trump’s Russian “peace plan” for Ukraine, the Secretary of Hair and Makeup is having a prissy fit threatening to court martial Senator Mark Kelly, maybe he’s drunk, and the FBI and DOJ say they’re going to harass Kelly and those other five Democrats for reminding servicemembers that their duty is to the country and the Constitution, not to Stupid Hitler.
So obviously things are going well for them.
And now suddenly everybody is talking about the special election next Tuesday in Tennessee’s Seventh District, to replace recently resigned Republican Mark Green.
If things go incredibly well, Democrat Aftyn Behn, a current state representative, could pull off an upset, which would make House Speaker Mike Johnson’s life even more difficult than it already is, or even ultimately help steal his speakership before the midterms and effectively end his political career for the rest of his life, after which Jesus will look at Mike Johnson and say, “Away from me, I never knew you!” and dropkick him into the eternal fires of hell, as a punishment for every time he has ever masturbated.
Could that even happen? (Mike Johnson going to hell for masturbating? Sure.) Could it happen in deep-red Tennessee, which has the lowest turnout rates in the entire nation? (Not sure what voter turnout in Tennessee has to do with Mike Johnson’s masturbations.)
Well!
If you remember, before Donald Trump started ordering Republicans to gerrymander their already highly gerrymandered states all the way to fuck — which is, again, looking like it may backfire on them BIGLY — Tennessee did just that. There used to be two solidly blue Tennessee congressional seats out of the nine, roughly coterminous with Memphis and Nashville. (Tennessee went 64-34 for Trump, approximately, in 2024, so you can see that 7-2 was already unfair.) Then Tennessee Republicans decided that Nashville, an exploding, filthy rich metropolis that is every bit as blue as Memphis, didn’t deserve congressional representation, because its district wasn’t protected by the Voting Rights Act like Memphis’s was. So they sliced Nashville into three pieces and gave them each to the surrounding Republican districts.
And now, at least before Green left, Tennessee’s congressional delegation is 8-1, and 8-1 it will stay!
Or will it?
See, that’s the thing about gerrymandering your shit all to fuck, slicing Democrats up and transferring them into Republican districts, it actually makes red districts pinker. And that’s fine if Republicans are popular and can be confident that they’re gonna win all the pink districts.
But what happens when everybody hates Donald Trump and everybody hates his fascism and everybody hates his idiot fucking tariffs and everybody hates ICE and everybody hates literally everything about these vile, incompetent lunatics who currently control every branch of government? Well, big swings can happen just like they did at the beginning of this month.
Big enough swings to totally screw Republicans?
It would appear Republicans are panicked enough to think it’s at least a possibility.
Meet Aftyn Behn! Here is an interview she did this weekend on MS NOW.
Behn is running against a Trump-stained, we mean Trump-endorsed Republican named Matt Van Epstein, we mean Van Epps — he doesn’t want to see those Epstein Files released, which became an issue in this special election earlier this month — and Republicans are suddenly pouring money into a race they shouldn’t have to even pay attention to. In response, Democrats are also pouring money into it.
She’s running on economics, on affordability, all those things, and she’s running significantly to the left of where you might expect a Democrat in the South in a very red district to land. Will it work? You don’t know!
“This is a predominately Republican district,” Behn told [Mother Jones]. “It was drawn that way.” Indeed, Republicans never intended for it to become a battleground, but the special election has given Democratic voters in the state who are fed up with Trump’s agenda an opening. […]
“We have a state government that has inhibited the city of Nashville from addressing the rise of the cost of living,” Behn said. “We have a federal government that is in chaos and cannot address the cost of living.”
Donald Trump won the transmogrified, redrawn Seventh in 2024 by 22 points. (Back when it was a deeper red, the Seventh was Marsha Blackburn’s district, when she was just a wee home ec major idiot bumblefucking her way through the great big Congress.) Is a swing that big possible? Again, you don’t know!
Lauren Egan at the Bulwark has talked to people on the ground, and Republicans and Democrats (privately) both think ultimately Van Epps will still win, but the Dems would like to narrow the gap to single digits. But again, look at all this money:
Regardless of the result, Democrats already believe that the TN-7 race has proved fruitful. Forcing Republicans to spend money on this race means that they will have fewer resources for more closely contested contests elsewhere. The Trump-allied super PAC MAGA Inc. and the Club for Growth have spent a combined $1.7 million in support of Van Epps over the past few weeks. Meanwhile, the House Majority PAC—which backs Democratic candidates—announced on Friday that it was spending $1 million on TV and digital ads boosting Behn.
Below you can watch Fox News panicking about Aftyn Behn, calling her the “AOC of Tennessee” and reporting on her “AMAZING” long-ago “admission” that she “hates Nashville.” (Everybody hates Nashville, and if you listen to the interview from 2020 they dug up, you’ll hear that what she actually said is that she hates the same things about Nashville that everybody hates about Nashville, like pedal taverns and bachelorette parties. Also, they say she has been “labeled” the “AOC of Tennessee,” when of course, it was they who labeled her that.)
They are also very upset that Kamala Harris and Jasmine Crockett came to town to campaign for her, and that she said “y’all” in that interview, which is obviously not how Southern Democrats talk, according to pigfucking Fox News hosts. (It is how we all talk.)
They sure seem panicked for some reason.
Guess you could also give Behn some money.
You know, if you’re not spending it all on giblet gravy and POT.
OPEN THREAD!
[Bulwark / Mother Jones]
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Chickenz update.
Some of you might have seen her post earlier today saying she was in the hospital, she had had a bad seizure, was going through tests and getting fluids.
She is still in the hospital but feeling better with snarkability fully intact. She may be there a couple days. I am in constant contact with her and she may drop by or I can pass along any love.
ETA from Chicken: "Tell them I’m in pretty good rusty spirits
Then I got no pot in my system
Arrrrge
And I would kill for a cigarette the last time I was in the hospital I had quit "
A new When Harry Met Daisy is up, this time we a hear a voice from out of nowhere. https://open.substack.com/pub/ziggywiggy/p/when-harry-met-daisy-ep-21?r=2knfuc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false