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Today’s headline might seem like breaking news from 2024 but it’s the story of this week in politics. Democrats botched what might have been the political upset of the year by nominating another progressive with a history of expressing views on policing that most Americans rightly find repulsive. As for the Republicans who managed to sweat and strain and hold on to what should have been a safe U.S. House seat in Tuesday’s Tennessee special election, there’s not much to celebrate except that the GOP is still blessed with unhinged opponents. On Tuesday Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn in the race for Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District by about 9 percentage points. Donald Trump won the district last year by 22. The Journal’s William McGurn called it at the start of this week: Mr. Van Epps is still likely to win Tuesday. But if Ms. Behn manages to make it a tight race in so red a district, what does that say for Republicans’ prospects of keeping their majority in next year’s midterm elections? It says, among other things, that Republican prospects improve every time an aspiring member of the House Progressive Caucus wins a Democratic primary. The irony of Ms. Behn’s loss is that while she became semi-famous for saying that she hated Nashville and country music, she ran extremely well in Music City’s portion of the district. She got clobbered in the more rural and suburban areas, where her progressive agenda made her unacceptable, even to voters who are not enamored of Donald Trump. “Democrats paid a price for their nominee,” according to Steve Kornacki. He writes for NBC News:
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