🤡 SPECIAL ELECTION: THE NINCOMPOOP PARLIAMENT OF TN-7

Let’s begin with the one thing in this whole mess that didn’t lose its mind: the vote.

For all the breathless online melodrama — the “history in the making” chatter being blasted from Toronto to San Diego — the numbers behaved exactly how any reasonable observer expected them to… aside from those few absurd minutes when Aftyn Behn looked like she was leading simply because one certain county hadn’t bothered to report its early vote yet.

Way to up the drama, Williamson. Really kept the nation guessing for absolutely no reason. Every other county posted first, the socials hyperventilated, MSNBC interns fainted, and for one fleeting moment the national imagination convinced itself that TN District 7 was about to turn into Vermont.

Then Williamson’s early vote finally dropped, and the fantasy collapsed on contact.

In that instant—literally the moment those numbers hit the screen—Polymarket flipped Matt Van Epps to a 99% chance of victory. The bettors followed the math, called the result, and went back to whatever degenerates do between markets. Why so confident? Because within a week of an election, they run 94% accuracy, and this race behaved exactly like every race they’ve ever priced in a district shaped like TN-7.

Sure, Behn’s odds spiked to around 16% today, and she spent most of the week hovering around ten to twelve. But that’s what happens when you hand national Democrats a special election right before the holidays — it’s the political equivalent of watering Gremlins after midnight. They multiply, they shriek, they start lecturing Tennesseans about Tennessee, and before long the timeline looks like a swarm of people who’ve convinced themselves they’re watching a political realignment instead of an election in red Middle Tennessee.

They get worked up. They get loud. They start believing their own group chats.
And then they lose by nine.

Nine points.
Not close.
Only cosmetically interesting because it wasn’t twenty.

And that restrained margin is where the circus actually begins — the numbers were steady, but too many voters weren’t. You had Republicans who just didn’t show up. They stayed home because it was cold, or because it was the holidays, or because they assumed somebody else would go handle it. And that’s how a district built for a twenty-point win ends up pretending nine is normal.

Then the out-of-state Democrats rolled in — people who had no real stake in Tennessee but decided to treat a special election like a national test case. They showed up from Ontario, from Massachusetts, from anywhere except here, and posted like they were witnessing a political breakthrough instead of projecting their own wish lists onto a district they don’t live in. Threads, declarations, performative urgency — all built on the idea that Aftyn Behn was ever in striking distance.

Folks… Behn was a terrible candidate.
But this still wasn’t the strangest part of the story.

That honor goes to the “Grassroots” Republicans who actively rooted for Matt Van Epps to lose because their preferred candidate didn’t make it through the primary. Instead of strengthening the party, they aimed to damage it. They wanted a Democrat to win just so they could say “I told you so” afterward. They claim principle, but the truth is simpler and uglier: it was a revenge fantasy.

And while they were busy “sending a message,” a few elected Republicans tried their own version of evasion — posting reminders to “go vote” while refusing to say the candidate’s name. It wasn’t discretion or strategy. It was fear of offending their own factions, so they pretended neutrality and hoped no one would notice. We did.

But the true architect of this mess—the supreme nincompoop who set the whole chain of chaos in motion—was former Congressman Mark Green. He bailed on the district, created the vacuum, triggered the low-turnout scramble, and left everyone else to clean up the fallout. Then he vanished. Whatever he’s doing now is his business. It just doesn’t need to be ours anymore.

Which brings us back to the one person in this story who didn’t contribute to any of the nonsense: Matt Van Epps. Most people couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup during the primary. His campaign wasn’t loud or flashy. But he earned the nomination, won the race, and did so while navigating a special election rife with uncertainty.

He doesn’t deserve resentment from Republicans who stayed home out of spite.
He doesn’t deserve the hesitation from politicians who wouldn’t say his name.
He doesn’t deserve the mess Mark Green left behind.

And let’s not forget: Van Epps’ success is District Seven’s success.
Tonight he has earned sincere, straightforward congratulations.

So welcome, Congressman Matt Van Epps.
You didn’t cause this chaos — but you handled it.
Now go make Tennessee proud

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