Last night, voters stopped Aftyn Behn and once again rejected the Democrats’ radical platform.

“She way underperformed last night, and it's because their message is so far off. They are just bowing to the far-left woke side of their party.” – RNC Co-Chair @kc4gop pic.twitter.com/DaXOUdFtdu

— GOP (@GOP) December 3, 2025

You wouldn’t know it from the RNC’s tweet above that Congressional Republicans – on Tuesday into Wednesday following their dude Matt Van Epps’s 8.9 percent win in Tennessee’s 7th District special election – are not looking forward to next November, with one who was “granted anonymity to speak candidly” telling Politico that “Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle.”

“Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain,” the weasel continued, the lack of “certainty” in that an understatement at best.

GOP Strategist Matt Bartlett was even less sanguine, saying “None of it bodes well for the GOP in the midterms. Being an ostrich with your head in the sand on the key issues that matter most to Americans is not a strategy, or certainty not a winning one.” Canadian-American Texas Senator Ted Cruz told Fox News the situation “was dangerous. We could have lost this district because the people who showed up, many of them are the ones that are motivated by how much they dislike President Trump. In a year, it’s going to be a turnout election, and the left will show up.”

“Hate is a powerful motivator,” Cruz added because even if irony’s dead he can still abuse its corpse.

I’ve noticed the same thing here in North Carolina.

Democrats have insanely good ground game, mostly funded by huge, HUGE non-profits.

If we have any chance of winning, we have to out work them, and that’s hard to do considering thei apparatus.

But it’s possible.

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) December 3, 2025

You got the gist. However, there’s another, more typical, post-Dem-overperformance-in-a-special take from Republicans worth noting here: “I think it’s a mistake to read too much into these special elections, because the turnout is so low – and when the Democrats are particularly motivated. I would caution anyone who tries to read too much into any of these special elections.”

Worth noting because it wasn’t from this week but rather August, when Iowa GOP strategist David Kochel was asked by NBC to comment on Cornhole State Dems’ sweep of four state legislative specials that month, one of them a 45 percent dropoff in turnout from the 2022 midterms, a story very typical of pretty much every off-year and/or special election since 2017, win or lose for Dems.

That’s, uh, not what happened in Tennessee’s 7th on Tuesday. Compare it to the other US House specials from so far this year, all of which saw Dem overperformances versus the 2022 midterms:

There was 99.3 percent turnout and the very lefty-ish Dem candidate did 13.3 percent better than her 2022 predecessor against a very run-of-the-mill MAGA Republican candidate. THIS is the transubstantiation of the “generic Congressional ballot” number you see on polls – or really just the Marist/NPR/PBS one from last month that put Dems up 14 percent over Republicans.

You can’t even compare Tuesday in TN-7 to the last actually contested special, the one to replace George Santos in NY-3 when Tom Suozzi won by 8 percent early last year. Turnout in that snowstorm-marred one – 172,473 total – was still just 63.5 percent of the 271,228 who showed up in the 2022 midterms and sent the star Baruch college volleyball player to Congress for 11 months.

“They spent about $15 million to win a seat President Biden won by 8 points, they won it by less than 8 points. Their candidate ran like a Republican, sounded like a Republican talking about the border and immigration… the incumbent had been a three-term member of Congress and had a 100 percent name ID and a deep family history in the district, our candidate was relatively unknown. She ran a remarkable campaign, there was a weather event that affected turnout, there are a lot of factors there, that is in no way a bellwether of what is gonna happen this fall,” was Jesus Dork Mike Johnson’s song and dance the day after (and sadly he was kind of right on that last point).

He hasn’t even tried the same one this time, just saying he’s “steady at the wheel, everybody. It’s going to be fine. Our best days are ahead of us. Americans are going to be feeling a lot better in the early part of next year,” and other sweet nothings to reporters since Tuesday.

What does a D+13 midterms look like? Better, less hastily composed memes than the above, for one.

It would also indeed be “a bitch of an election cycle” for Republicans. Forget the House, it’s gone for them, now Dems can start seriously talking about 51 senate seats – or even one or two more.

Sherrod Brown lost in Ohio by 3.8 percent last year. Roy Cooper never lost an election in North Carolina. Mary Peltola lost her House reelection bid in Alaska by 2.6 percent last year – she hasn’t declared for the Senate yet but Chuck Schumer better be nagging the hell out of her to take on that cumsock Dan Sullivan now after Tuesday. Maine’s a tough lock to pick but it will be left wide open if Concern Lady doesn’t run again. Iowa’s economy’s in the shitter, though Joni Ernst might’ve been an easier target than her would-be replacement Congresswoman Ashley Hinson. Texas TBD with Paxton vs Cornyn. Florida needs a goddamned Dem candidate even if that creepy weirdo Ashley Moody’s probably just going to glide into a full six-year term anyway. Nebraska might be in play too.

The point is that Aftyn Behn’s loss gave us something legitimately more valuable than a single House seat flipped at 50 percent of normal turnout would’ve: An EXTREMELY real-world look at the 2026 midterms picture simply by the turnout being almost what it was in 2022. That’s freaking big.