So I waited until the dust settled after the TN election to suggest this, but....

[EarlG]

33. Seems a bit irrelevant...

As Just_Vote_Dem pointed out upthread, there was a Democratic primary with four candidates (Vincent Dixie, Aftyn Behn, Bo Mitchell, and Darden Copeland), and Behn won it. The Democrats in TN-7 decided upon the Democratic candidate, so outsider commentary on whether she should have been more moderate or not seems a bit beside the point.

But honestly, I feel like the old labels of "moderate," "conservative," "liberal," and even "left," and "right," are starting to seem a bit quaint these days. It feels like a change election cycle is brewing, and what we really have in America right now is "MAGA" (who are in power) and "not-MAGA" (who are not). It breaks down along pretty bright lines: If you are MAGA, then you are in the Trump cult. If you are not-MAGA, then in the eyes of MAGA you are a raging far-left communist, and that encompasses everyone from Zohran Mamdani and Aftyn Behn all the way through to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

The wingnuts and pundits who are crowing that Behn could have won if she'd been less "radical" are kinda missing the point. If you win a district in 2024 by 22 percentage points and then come back one year later and win the same district by 9 percentage points, the trend is clearly heading in the wrong direction for your party. The fact that Democrats managed this with a "radical" candidate should be even more of a wake-up call to Republicans, frankly.

In 2026 voter choice will pretty much come down to whether you pull the lever for MAGA or not-MAGA, and while there are a ton of MAGA still out there (obviously there are plenty of them in TN-7), going by this week's election their numbers seem to be on the decline.