In 6 days A Tennessee Special Election Will Redefine What's Possible

A Bernie Democrat is within 2 points in a district Trump won by 22.

Something interesting is happening in Tennessee.

If you don’t know much about my home state and you’ve just got a picture in your brain, let me fill it in. Tennessee rose from the ashes of the Depression through the New Deal and the Arsenal of Democracy. The TVA. Rural electrification. Factories galore. A place where poverty was being replaced with progress through public investment, public will, and national works. It’s a place where the Ku Klux Klan was born, but so was the Highlander Center, where Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. trained in nonviolent resistance during the Civil Rights Movement.

The Tennessee I know and love is rearing its beautiful head again.

There’s a special election in six days. December 2nd. According to a new Emerson College poll, not an internal, not some left-leaning outfit, but Emerson, one of the most reputable pollsters in the country, a progressive Democrat is down by just 2 points in a district Donald Trump won by 22.

Not a “moderate.” Not an Abigail Spanberger type who spends half her time telling you what she won’t do. Not Phil Bredesen’s Tennessee Democratic Party. This is State Rep Aftyn Behn. A Bernie Sanders Democrat. Someone saying the game is rigged against you and meaning it.

According to the Third Way playbook, the gospel according to Decide to Win, the Searchlight Institute, the whole consultant class, this shouldn’t be possible. Progressives can’t win in red districts, they tell us. The only path is centrism. Triangulation. Running scared from your own values.

And yet Emerson has it at 48-46.

Stop listening to them. Stop listening to the consultants. Stop listening to the people who’ve been wrong for 40 years. Stop second-guessing your instincts about what your neighbors might want. Start listening to your heart. Start listening to your brain. Start believing in the values that made you a Democrat in the first place.

The Democratic Party I grew up hearing stories about, the one my great-granddad talked about, the one my grandfather fought to build through the labor movement, the one my other grandfather fought to build through the civil rights movement, that party can be reborn right now. Not someday. Now. This is the moment when the real Democratic Party gets to emerge from under 40 years of bullshit.

Look at what voters in this district actually say they care about. Same Emerson poll. 38% say the economy is the most important issue. 15% say housing affordability. 13% say healthcare. That’s two-thirds of a Trump +22 district saying the same thing.

We can’t afford our lives. We’re tired of the struggle. We’re tired of the anxiety. We want a system that supports us instead of extracts from us.

Immigration? 6%. Crime? 5%.

These people aren’t looking for culture war. They’re looking for someone who’ll fight for them.

Here’s the thing about Trump voters that the Democratic establishment refuses to understand. Many of them want change. Real change. They want a system that actually produces value in their lives. They want to build things in this country again. They’re not cartoon villains. Many voted Obama, then Trump. Some went Trump, Biden, Trump. They’re not ideologues. They’re people shopping for someone who seems like they might actually fight for them.

We’re not going to win them back with middle-of-the-road bullshit that doesn’t come across as real because it isn’t real. We’re going to win them with big ideas, bold candidates, and people ready to do the hard work of actually changing things.

That’s what Aftyn represents.

She doesn’t have to win to prove something incredible. If she closes a 22-point Trump margin to a few points, that’s massive. But here’s where it gets even more interesting.

The Republican majority in the Tennessee state house got clever. They took one of the last two Democratic districts and carved it up into three Republican seats. Gerrymandering 101. But if Behn flips this district, or even comes close, those other two are suddenly in play. The same map they drew to destroy Democratic representation could flip on them entirely.

Think about what that means. Multiply it across the country.

Back in FDR’s day, we went from a small Republican majority in the House, the Senate, and the presidency, this exact moment we’re in now, to Democratic supermajorities and four terms of a Democratic president in just three cycles. That brings us to the 2030 elections. Less than five years from now.

2026 is right around the corner. Then 2028. Then 2030.

If the Democratic Party can have the courage to be what we are in our hearts and our DNA, the party that stands against big banks, against monopolies, that fights for public investment, that builds things instead of just throwing money at broken systems, we can pull ourselves back from the brink.

But it starts with us. The voters. Having the courage to believe that our neighbors, even the ones who voted for Trump, might actually respond to someone willing to fight for them. Think about this when the primaries come around next year. Remember Tennessee’s 7th.

So what’s my ask? I’m not going to tell you to donate. What Aftyn needs right now, what we need now isn’t money. What we need is for this story to be heard.

Share this. Forward it. Post about her on every platform you’ve got. If Aftyn wins, I want it to echo everywhere. And if she comes close, don’t let the consultant class spin it as some weird anomaly.

It was a 22-point Trump district. Twenty-two. And now it’s within two.

This is what’s possible when we believe in ourselves.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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