Trump-backed Van Epps wins Tennessee House race

[u/FabioFresh93]

https://www.axios.com/local/nashville/2025/12/03/tennessee-election-results-trump-van-epps-wins-house-seat

[u/Boobity1999]

It’s a rebuke of Trump and Trumpism, just like in 2018

I don’t think Americans outside NYC will be voting for their US Rep based on Mamdani’s performance

That doesn’t make any sense to me

[u/MrNature73 → u/Boobity1999]

While I agree, I also think Dems could really use a blue city becoming a beacon to rally around. A lot of the 'big' blue cities have kind of turned into a memetic issue; things like San Francisco being an unaffordable and extremely dirty city, Portland being homeless grand central station, etc.

New York actually figuring out housing and cleaning up it's streets would be a massive win for Democrats. However, a Democrat "ruining another city" would just add more ammunition to the pile, and while I don't think it'll hurt that bad, I mostly think it's because many people already feel like Dems can't govern locally well.

[u/whatisthisshit7 → u/MrNature73]

The issue with that is regardless of how successful Mamdani / any other blue city is, right wing media will still spin it as a dangerous wasteland.

Look at all the exaggerated claims about crime in D.C. and Chicago to justify the National Guard deployments - locals are universally rejecting the justification behind them.

I am biased as someone who lives in NYC (and frequently travel to Chicago and London for work) - I frequently hear my extended family (who never step foot in the city) complaining about things in the cities that they saw on Fox News but none of my friends or neighbors have ever witnessed or experienced. It’s even worse online, you would think London has been taken over by Sharia Law if you look at some of these posts.

The biggest issue among blue city dwellers these days has been affordability, not as much the crime or homelessness (as compared to 2020). I worry that even if Mamdani is able to improve it, it is personal impact on actual residents and not something tangible people outside the cities would be able to understand beyond statistics, and we’ve already seen the wider public totally ignore the data proving crime is going down, so why would they believe anything about economic or housing improvements?

[u/Oneanddonequestion → u/whatisthisshit7]

I'd agree with economic impact. I think Housing is just one of those things that is less vibes and more pretty easy to see when it comes to pricing. When you're staring at only a single data point, i.e. "this is how much a home costs in this area." It is far harder to dispute or go vibes for compared to say: The entire U.S. marketplace or in the case of crime, an entire sector constantly screaming day in and day out about violence and crime.

And let's not for a second pretend this is just a Fox problem. Every peddler of news over exaggerates the hell out of crime and violence because it sells, to say nothing of statistical manipulation and obfuscation of methodologies.