Tennessee’s titan lesson for Republicans

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Republican Matt Van Epps won a closely watched special election in Tennessee last night, defeating Democrat Aftyn Behn. But Republicans writ large may still be wringing their hands as they look forward. Despite Van Epps’ relatively easy victory, the margin of victory — which drastically trailed President Donald Trump’s edge in the district last year — shows that Republicans still have work to do to find a message that lands on affordability. Playbook’s Jack Blanchard and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns break down what the results mean for the midterms and whether Trump can strike the right chord on cost-of-living issues.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the Playbook podcast, the Republicans win an election, but their margin of victory
0:10.9	looks ominously small as we head into 2026.
0:14.5	Steve Wickoff is back in D.C. after his latest jaunt to the Kremlin, but there's still
0:18.3	no peace deal. And Pete Hexas, big week is getting even
0:22.1	bigger. We'll all be reading the Signalgate report tomorrow. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard.
0:27.2	And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Wednesday, December 3rd.
0:31.4	How are you, Dashwood? It's good to have you back. How's things?
0:34.0	Thank you. Bezie, my friend. We've got a lot coming up. I won't give the full
0:39.1	tease here, but things are coming. All I want to know is, did you spend two hours last night
0:44.5	glued to the Tennessee special election like I did? Did you sit there watching election nerds
0:50.0	tweeting about it while you were watching in real time people analyze the results of this
0:53.9	small part of Nashville? I mean, listen, is the tweeting about it while you were watching in real-time people analyze the results of this small
0:54.3	part of Nashville.
0:56.5	I mean, listen, is the Pope Catholic?
1:00.0	You can't help yourself, can you?
1:02.3	Can't help myself.
1:03.3	You know, I love elections.
1:04.8	We know why you're listening to this podcast because you absolutely love this stuff as books as we do.
1:08.5	So you know already that the Tennessee 7th
1:11.1	congressional district had a special election last night and the Republicans won, which they were
1:15.5	expected to do, but the margin of victory data was not enough to have many Republicans celebrating
1:21.2	on the hill. And look, coming off of November's elections, this is flashing red warning signs for the Republican Party.
	...

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