Veteran Defeats Loony Lefty in House Race

Yesterday, Tennessee held a special congressional election to fill the seat of recently-resigned Mark Green. Based on my quick read of pre- and post- election analyses in The New York Post and The Guardian, respectively, I take the result as a muted rebuke to the GOP.

Glenn Reynolds, writing for the Post, notes that, although the district had voted for Trump by 22 percentage points, it now leans Republican by about 10 percent after a 2020 redistricting increased its share of urban voters, who lean Democrat overall.

Despite the district's new, relatively competitive status, the conservative Reynolds dismissed the idea that the race should be the canary in the coal mine Democrat Mark Pulliam had called it:

[Democrat Aftyn] Behn is a former organizer for the George Soros-funded leftist "resistance" group Indivisible, and she has a propensity for saying, and doing, crazy things.

She has, for example, expressed contempt for Nashville, which she seeks to represent.

"I hate this city," Behn said in a recently resurfaced video.

"I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music," she railed. "I hate all the things that make Nashville apparently an 'It city' to the rest of the country."

You'd think "I hate country music" would be the kiss of death all by itself. (Here in Tennessee, our views on bachelorettes and pedal taverns are more mixed.)

But that's just the start of Behn's bizarre ranting.

She's publicly discussed her therapy sessions, and her "recurring dream" of "standing up in a cafeteria full of women ... and saying 'I don't want children. I want power!' And just screaming it at the top of my lungs."

Well, you can see why she won the Democratic primary.

She's said that women who have children are supporting the "patriarchy," and has encouraged "self-managed, at-home abortions" in states that ban the procedure.

And a 2019 video showed her screaming and sobbing while state troopers dragged her out of Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee's office after she dashed in without authorization. [bold added]

No wonder Reynolds says she'd make AOC look like a dignified stateswoman.

Let me add: She also makes Donald Trump look sane by comparison.

Her opponent, Matt Van Epps, defeated her by 9 percent, which was close to both what Democrats expected and the party affiliation gap in the redrawn district -- after big assists from his party, with "Trump campaign[ing] virtually on Van Epps's behalf in the closing days of the race," and "Republicans ... spending an unusually large amount of money in the district 'in a desperate last-minute attempt to avoid a Democratic overperformance'." according the Guardian.

Both parties will crow about the result, but I fail to see bragging rights for either. Rather, I remember the words of a Trump supporter whose business is being battered by Trump's tariffs, but who even now defends his vote:

Even after losing his business to Trump's policies, he stands by his vote: "Given the two people running, regardless of what they said on the campaign trail, I would've voted for President Trump again."

Reynolds attributes the closeness of the race to apathetic GOP voters, but even if we grant that Behn would get strong support from regular Democrat voters, might her nuttiness have muted discontent from Republican and independent voters?

When both parties are crazy and espouse anti-freedom, anti-prosperity policies, it can be hard even for non-partisans to read the tea leaves. That said, this was a race between a veteran (in the South no less) and a crazy person. If I were a Republcan, I wouldn't puff my chest out too much over this win.

-- CAV