I Drove to Nashville for This
I’m writing this from Nashville the night before the election. I decided to make the drive
so I could watch this one in person.
Tomorrow I’ll be out all day. Talking to voters at the polls. Talking to volunteers and
staffers. Trying to understand if they know how big this moment is. Then I’ll be at the
watch party as the results come in. Maybe I’ll get to talk to Aftyn Behn herself.
Win or lose, if she comes close, it’s big. It’s huge.
Aftyn Behn, a 36-year-old progressive Democrat—a Bernie Sanders Democrat, backed
by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—is running in a district Donald Trump won by 22 points.
She’s from Knoxville. Working class family. Dad grew up on food stamps. She got
arrested protesting a sexual predator in the Tennessee statehouse. Followed ICE
around Nashville with a camera this year. Her signature legislation? Repeal the sales
tax on groceries. Pocketbook populism.
According to the latest Emerson poll, she’s closed the gap to just 2. Within the margin of
error. In Trump +22 country.
According to the corporate Democrats, this is impossible.
Third Way, the centrist think tank that’s been wrong about everything for a decade, put
out a memo after Zohran Mamdani won the NYC Democratic primary. They called it
“Ten Reasons Why Mamdani Politics Won’t Win Outside of NYC.” Matt Bennett, their
executive vice president, told MSNBC that Mamdani’s victory is “a serious political
problem” for Democrats trying to flip red and purple seats.
Then there’s Welcome PAC. Billionaire-funded outfit. They released a 59-page report
called “Deciding to Win” arguing that Democrats need to “affirmatively moderate our
positions” on climate, democracy, abortion, and cultural issues. You know what their
electoral record was in 2024? They made independent expenditures in nine
congressional races. One of their candidates won. One. That’s an 11% win rate. And
they’re telling us how to win elections.
Rep. Jared Golden was the poster child for this approach. He wrote an op-ed before the
2024 election saying Trump was going to win and he was “OK with that.” Called
concerns about democracy “pearl-clutching.” How’d that work out? He announced he’s
not running for re-election. The model moderate is quitting. His approach didn’t protect
him. It didn’t build him a loyal base. It left him stranded—too moderate for Democrats,
still a Democrat to Republicans.
The whole thing is bankrupt. And they keep getting TV time anyway.
Here’s what they don’t want us to see: we’ve been here before. And we won.
In 1929, Republicans controlled everything. The Senate, 56-39. The House, 267-163.
The presidency, Herbert Hoover. Sound familiar?
Today Republicans control everything. The Senate, 53-45. The House, 219-215. The
presidency, Donald Trump.
By 1932, Democrats had the House. By 1933, they had the Senate. By 1937, they had
supermajorities—76 seats in the Senate, 333 in the House—and they held Congress for
most of the next 40 years.
That didn’t happen because Democrats moved to the center. It happened because they
embraced massive change that improved people’s lives. Socialists pushed them,
communists pushed them, and they moved. FDR didn’t triangulate. He took on the
banks. He took on the monopolies. He built things. The TVA. Rural electrification. Social
Security. The New Deal didn’t poll-test its way into existence.
And the voters are ready for it again. A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll from November
found 57% of Americans say the White House’s top priority should be lowering prices.
The same poll shows Democrats with a 14-point lead on the generic congressional
ballot—the biggest advantage since November 2017, a year before we flipped 40
House seats. Gallup shows positive views of capitalism at 54%—the lowest ever
recorded. Among Democrats, capitalism is at 42%. Socialism? 66%.
There’s plenty of proof that going big wins. That people are looking for change. Look at
what Mamdani actually did in New York. According to CBS News, 5% of his voters had
voted for Trump in 2024. In Queens, 15% of Trump voters flipped to him. What did they
care about? Affordability. The cost of living. Not ideology. Results.
That’s the coalition we should be building everywhere. And Tennessee is the test.
The 7th is exactly the kind of district they say requires a moderate. Mixed urban-rural.
Trump won it by 22. Behn isn’t running as a moderate. She’s running on affordability.
Healthcare. Opposing the gutting of Medicaid. She’s been called “the AOC of
Tennessee.”
And she’s within 2 points.
Look under the hood of that Emerson poll. Early voters break for Behn 56-42. Young
voters under 40 support her 64-36. Women break for her 50-44. Trump’s approval in the
district? 47-49. Underwater. In a district he won by 22 points.
Let me be clear about what we’re watching for tonight.
If Behn loses by single digits, that’s a win. A progressive Democrat closing a 22-point
Trump margin to under 10 proves them wrong. It proves you can run as a progressive in
red territory and compete.
If she loses by less than 5, that’s an earthquake. That’s proof the affordability message
translates beyond deep blue cities.
If she wins, the game changes completely. Every piece of conventional wisdom about
how Democrats need to run in red districts goes in the trash.
Any of these outcomes should give us the confidence to run louder, prouder, and bolder.
To run as progressives with big, New Deal-style ideas.
Whether Behn wins or loses today, the choice facing the Democratic Party is clear.
One path leads through Welcome PAC and Third Way. Through Jared Golden’s careful
triangulation that ended with him quitting. That path has been tried. It produced Kamala
Harris’s loss. It produced Joe Biden’s collapse. It produced 40 years of declining union
membership, rising inequality, and a party that can’t hold onto working-class voters
because it refuses to fight for them.
The other path leads through Tennessee’s 7th. Through Queens and Atlanta and
Detroit. Through candidates who say the game is rigged and mean it.
The Republicans went from Hoover’s trifecta to Roosevelt’s supermajorities in four
years. Four years.
2026 is next year. Then 2028. If we have the courage to be what we are—the party that
stands against monopolies, against extraction, against a system designed to bleed
working people dry—we can do this. Not by moderating. By transforming. That’s what
2026 is for. That’s how we build the party we need going into 2028.
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 exist again. But only if we stop listening to the people who’ve been wrong for 40
years and start building something worth believing in.
Tennessee’s 7th is showing us what’s possible.
Come spend election day with me. I’ll be out at polling places all day talking to voters. I’ll
be at the watch party as the returns come in. I’m livestreaming the whole thing—the
conversations, the waiting, the moment we find out what Tennessee decided. Find me
on YouTube and TikTok.
Share this. Forward it. If Aftyn wins, don’t let them spin it as some weird anomaly. And if
she comes close, don’t let them bury the story.
A Trump +22 district. Within 2 points. With a progressive running as a progressive.
This is what’s possible when we believe in ourselves.
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