Welcome to Beat everyone. I'm Mari Melbert. And it is one of those days even in an off year.

If you hear the music, you know it is another election night in America. And we have James Carville, the Democratic guru, standing by to get into what we're watching for.

So that should be interesting. Tennessee voters are hitting the polls for this special election.

It is a House race that in different years might not be that big a deal, but now has huge national implications.

Republicans are defending a seat. They should by any normal stretch be in a position to win.

Indeed, this district went for Trump by 22 points, but what a difference a year makes.

Polls show a much tighter race than you would usually see in such ruby red territory.

Republicans are, quote, sweating, either a close result or even potentially losing the seat.

That's how The Washington Post and Politico both described it.

Democrats had their big sweep last month.

This is a race we will be watching across MS now tonight, and for the hours ahead, I can tell you the polls close in two hours.

The wider context is that Trump is, of course, in one of the worst periods of this young second term.

The Dem sweep, which sets the table for tonight, was the first of several weeks of bruising bad news for Donald Trump that even if he

and the world stepped away for Thanksgiving break has returned to a similar tough picture.

And that's before we know what happens tonight. Hundreds of Washington Republicans, of course, revolted against Trump over his probably

biggest political vulnerability and oddest charge that he's faced in this whole first year of

the term, where Donald Trump basically went out of his way to repeatedly minimize and defend a sex trafficker,

refusing the transparency he once vowed, and giving lenience to that trafficker's co-conspirator.

That's just a capsule summary of what Republicans ultimately had to revolt against rather than defend when there was a vote.

Top Republicans, though, have not stopped there.

It would seem that, as we heard from some of our

experts during that week, what started wasn't just going to end, because if the emperor had no

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