Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump District SWINGS Towards Democrats In Special Election

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Dan reacts to Tuesday's special election results in Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort in. It's calling your name.

Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at choiceotails.com. All right. So we are recording this Tuesday evening. We have around 92% of the vote in. So Dan, love it. Can you kind of just walk us through what's happening right now in Tennessee's 7th district? Dan, I don't know how you feel about this. But this is my favorite kind of Democratic victory, a moral victory. That's fair to say that's what this is. But actually, I'd say it's more

the moral victory. But where we are right now as we're recording is the race has been called for Republican Matt Van Epps, who is running to replace Mark Green in Tennessee. seventh district. Mark Green retired really just out of nowhere, which resigned, I guess, to take a private sector job because he liked money more than Congress. So, and then, so where we are right now is we think Van Epps is on track to win by about seven points, maybe a little bit less than that, which is a huge shift in the Democratic direction because Donald Trump won this district just a year ago by just about 22 points. Well, Dan, you talked to Amy Walters. about what to look for?

How does your conversation with Amy look three days later? It seems about right, where that this was probably a bridge too far for the Democrats, even in a very, very good year. And a 15-point shift in the Democratic direction is huge. And the real question was going to be, you know, typically if you're going to win a special election like this, it's you do it when the other side is caught napping, where they weren't really expecting it.

They didn't spend the money and you just sort of sneak through. And that didn't happen this time. The polls were, you know, got close pretty quickly. The internal polls from the Republican side were very close. Republicans spent, you know, millions of dollars here. They deployed a bunch of surrogates. They were able to successfully nationalize the race. And despite that, it's the race still move 15 points in Democratic direction.

So I think, I think that's about right. Yeah. One thing, Amy just pointed out now in responding to the numbers as they're coming in is a lot of what Republicans did was just try to paint the Democratic. in as negative light as possible. They didn't do a lot of pro-Trump messaging or defending of Trump or defending of tariffs. They really tried to just make this about negative polarization. And we don't know how much it helped. But it certainly tells us something about what they think is effective right now.

At least in a Trump plus 22 district, right? There's a dozens upon dozens of districts that are more Democratic or less Republican than this one. And it's a question whether that would work. Because this is a pure turnout play for them. All they need to do is turn out the base and they will win because that's what the math is. But I do think, like, you're trying to get Republicans to turn out. Pro-Trump Republicans turn out and, you know, continue the Trump agenda takes a second, takes backseat to we must stop these terrible Democrats. Yeah, I think that is a very important

takeaway here, which is Afton Bain, the Democrat, ran a very, you know, Mamdani-Spanberger, Cheryl affordability-focused campaign. And the Republicans basically re-ran the same playbook. They ran in Virginia, New Jersey. It was, she's a... a radical. They took old videos and tweets of hers. They ran a lot of bigoted trans stuff. And that that strategy failed miserably in New Jersey and Virginia. It might have been enough to win by a little bit more than they would have otherwise went by, but it wasn't enough to make this a standard Republican district. And it does say to me that they do not as of yet have any sort of answer for affordability. They don't, they're not, they're not, they don't have their own ideas.

They're not attacking the Democratic ideas. They're not defending Trump's ideas. They're not distancing themselves from Trump to, you know, come out against a terrorist, something like that. They are just, they're trying to change the subject. And that was enough here, but that's not going to be enough and enough districts to keep the majority. Why were the stakes so high leading up to this election? This district is fairly conservative. Why did Democrats pour so much money into the specifically. Because we had a shot to win. Yeah, the fact that we were even talking about this, the fact that Steve Kornacki's on the ones and twos, you know, waiting for the results to come in, tells us that, like, they should never have been in a position to worry about this. If it does end

up a single digit victory for Republicans, it means you couldn't overcome, you know, gravity, though, just a plus 22 district would have been, I mean, it would have been catastrophic for them. It would have been amazing to see. But the fact that they were able to come in and spend the money. that they had to spend the money tells us a lot more than just the fact that we weren't able to overcome such a big deficit. But yeah, there was a chance. I think that this race actually reminds me a lot of the John Assoff's special election in 2017, where Tom Price, who was a pretty popular congressman from Georgia, retired to become Trump's eventually failed HHS nominee. And once again, very Republican district, Assoff runs, was a very, like, unknown candidate, very young.

he Democrats get their hopes up because it gets very close. Republicans then pour in all the money end up winning by a lot less in the partisanship of the district. And although we didn't pick up that seat, that was the real canary in the coal mine of what was going to come in 2018. So I think this one is very similar to that. This outcome is not unlike. It's probably like, you know, we're probably sitting in like the most likely outcome based on the information we had going in. But they didn't just spend money. I mean, they had surrogates going in.

They had Trump doing events, which means whatever they were seeing behind the scenes was either close enough or left them unsure enough to make getting involved necessary. Like, they just weren't, they weren't confident that they could just trust the partisanship of the district, which I just think is interesting for all of their bluster around Trump. Like, they don't know, right? They feel a bit unmoored and uncertain. about the politics of this moment. And if you're a Republican in the House,

this is not like a, this is a deeply disconcerting outcome. There are 28 Republicans who were in districts that Trump won by 10 or less, or Kamala Harris won. All those people should be very, very work. This was a 15 point or so swing in the Democratic direction. And I think it's also interesting that in other special elections issue, which are all sort of very low turnout, you know, Iowa state Senate races, things like that. The average shift in the Democratic direction has been about 13 points.

And the fact that that happened in this district in a nationalized race where Republicans are spending real money suggests it's a sustainable dynamic. It's not just something that is all about very, very low turnout. And I think the Trump thing is very interesting here. Because Trump did do two kind of fake teletown halls. He did, he'd sent a lot of tweets. He like got back on Twitter just to tweet about this. He, his only campaign appearance of note was that Mike Johnson was doing an event yesterday and Trump called him while he was at the event and then Mike Johnson put it on speaker. And at the time, it seemed like Mike Johnson was uncomfortable that Trump was on speaker.

The audience was uncomfortable Trump was on speaker. Like everyone knew this was not good for the campaign. The only person who was happy to be there is Trump. And it feels it feels like they did just, they tried to let Trump do some things so he could say he did something. without actually having him impact the race. And that is hugely significant because, once again, Trump plus 22 district, if your strategy is turnout, why are there not Trump robocalls? Why is Trump not in an ad?

Why is Trump not doing targeted social? Why are there targeted digital, that we know of at least right now, targeted digital media ads with Trump? Like, so if they didn't actually use them, which is what we believe right now, that means that in their own data, they looked at this and said, Trump definitely helps turn out Democrats, but he's not as he does not help us turn out Republicans in the same way we need. And that is that's just very, very interesting because they needed to win this race because if they lose it, one, it's cataclysmic. Everyone freaks out.

Retirements happen, but also puts the Republicans for a while at least like one seat away from losing the majority. I mean, part of this, right, like why is Trump posting on Twitter? Why is he doing these tele-town halls or whatever they are? It does seem part of it was they and and then why did you know fox news suddenly try to like make a star of uh the democratic candidate and it was just they knew that if they could just remind enough people about the they felt they just needed to get enough people to know about it like i i guess i wouldn't have are you sure that that's right that that using trump a little bit is enough to get it in the minds of the people that they want to get it in front of without him turning into kind of a negative

polarization? I think he already was negative polarization to the fact that he's president was going to turn out. I don't think Trump arriving on an airplane to campaign in Nashville or being in an ad would have ginned up Democratic turnout even more. Like there was pretty significant Democratic turnout. The, you know, Afton Bain won Davidson County early vote, which is where Nashville is by 70 points. Like the Democratic area is turned out. And almost every single county move 15 points in the Democratic direction. I think there's one very Republican small county that was like 10 points, but all double-digit shifts. And I don't, but the thing is the citizen is the Republicans didn't think that Trump would be significant in helping them turn their votes out.

Because he's not, he just showed up in none of the Matt Van Epps ads either. Well, right, right. Well, that's, yes, I guess what I'm getting like, part of this is also Trump saying, well, this guy's going to lose, I don't want to own it. Right. Like, I don't, we just don't, you know what could they get from Trump. I get why they wouldn't want to use him in an ad. The race is called, it looks like right now it's still at about seven point margin. What happens next? What does it mean that we lost, but we lost and one kind of in people's hearts? What do you think? I don't know that it changes very much. If you were a Republican who was thinking about announcing your retirement, this does not make that decision any different. I think if you're one of the

Republicans in these, you know, 20 or so seats that's tonight would suggest are pretty hard to hold on to based on just these numbers, you're deciding whether or not you want to kind of go through all the fundraising and effort and time only to lose or to let everybody know that you're going to kind of get out. Because we know that there's a bunch of Republicans who are wanting to announce that they're not planning to seek reelection, and even some that maybe want to leave before their term is done, but none of them want to be the one that either hand Democrats the gavel or, you know, seem like they're signaling the rush for the exits. I don't know. Dan, what do you think? Yeah, I think this

basically tells us that they were, we, the way we felt after New Jersey and Virginia is the way we should feel right now, which is there is a significant shift in the Democratic direction. If you're a Republican who was telling yourself, well, those were blue states, so I'm fine. Here you are in a deeply red district. It means this is a national political trend. It's not just Democrats being fired up in Democratic areas. It is a depression of the Republican base. It's an independence problem, and it's a fired up Democratic base. And that, you know, that really, you know, that should worry Republicans. Obviously, if we had won this race, it would have been a cataclysmic political event. It would have been one of the biggest upsets in special election history. But I always think the fact

that Democrats performed this well in a district, this Republican would turn out this high in a race that was nationalized is a very positive sign. We obviously have a long way to go before 2026, but it's a very positive data point for feeling good about our prospects. Yeah, because it starts to look less like a off-year election in which Democrats have dominated and starts to look more like what a traditional midterm will look like. Now, they got their people out in the end, and it was enough to show you what a potential 26 margin would be, and it is not one that they should feel particularly And look, if we're being honest here, Afton Bain ran a very, an excellent campaign.

She did a very good job of firing up the base. She also was a candidate that was not a perfect fit for the district either, right? You know, usually if you win a special election and you have to win this many Trump voters to win, you need someone who looks a little more like Connor Lamb in 2018. And Afton Bain was a indivisible organizer to state representative. She's been very active in protests. And so a lot of those videos you see in the ads of her were probably helpful in their radical. their attempts to radicalize her or make her seem sort of nationalize the race.

But having said that, she actually did, it was an interesting strategy she had, which was to lean into turning out the base, turning out voters in Davidson County, turning out the national vote, doing an event with AOC two nights before the election, Kamala Harris campaign for her, which is sort of not what you would necessarily expect in a race where you're trying not to nationalize it, but she got great turnout and, you know, overperform a 15 or so points. So, you know, kudos to her. how many seats we could pick up with a Democratic plus 14 swing here? As I said, there are 28 seats, I'm doing the math correctly. So four that Kamala Harris won that have Republicans in them.

There are 10 seats that Trump won by less than five points. And then another 14 seats, I think, that Trump won between five and 10 points. And so that's not a huge playing field. You know, we won't pick up 40 seats or whatever it was in 2018. There aren't that many seats in play. and you already have a handful of Democrats who are now in deeply Republican seats because of gerrymandering, and we have the, you know, we lost, potentially lose your golden seat with his retirement. But the key is, I mean, it says a lot, I talk about this with Amy Walter on the podcast, but it's pretty shocking there's like 180 seats that Trump won by more than 10 points. And if we can, we will have real success or we can really build a sustainable majority if we can get into that 10 to 15.

seats that Trump won by 10 to 15 points and pick up some of those. We'd have to really do great because even in 2018, I think we won only about a quarter of the seats that Trump won by five to 10 points. So you'd have to really, you would need really high turnout and Trump numbers to drop, which could happen because this is not a typical first midterm. It's a second midterm, whereas you sometimes have a depressed base. So we'll see, but we, you know, obviously the majority is very well within reach and you can go beyond that as well.

Yeah. I also, like, this is yet another data point. Retirements will tell us more because one thing that happened as you were getting towards 18 is there starts to be this kind of like momentum and you have like more, you know, infighting. You have Republicans have been able to decide on whether to run, you know, how to ignore Trump, run against Trump, like try to go. Like there starts to become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy if it does start to look as though Democrats are a favor to win the House, which I think you would say they are right now,

doesn't have to happen. It could obviously not happen because of a bunch of things that can happen between now and then. But what happens in 2018 happens in part because as you get closer, the Republicans kind of fall apart. Yeah, it usually tips in one direction. And look, I think the main takeaway here is this was, even though it was a loss and a win would have been awesome, this is still a very good news for Democrats. And this was a very fulfilling moral victory. Beautiful.

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