Sorry, but I couldn’t narrow it down to 10
Folks, we have a vibe shift! Aftyn didn’t win, but Tennessee hasn’t felt like this in play in a long time.
I’ve watched elections in Tennessee closely for 15 years, and the moral victory for Aftyn’s campaign is real. If this trend holds, we just watched a purple district come alive in Tennessee.
Call it cope if you want—but I think we’ll say these were the winners and losers a year from now.
THE WINNERS
Aftyn Behn
Feel free to laugh at me for calling the loser the winner, but Aftyn Behn is now the most famous Democrat in Tennessee. She has her haters, but as far as the Democratic voting public is concerned, it’s her party. She proved that we can make gains with a campaign that feels like the future. In Knoxville, you constantly meet Democrats with a “Gloria story”—a time when she inspired them to get active. Now a lot of people in CD7 have an Aftyn story, and that matters a lot long-term. Her future is bright. “They don’t understand the stubborn hope of our people” was the line for me in Aftyn’s speech. I stubbornly hope she rings in the new year with a campaign announcement.
Kate Briefs
No one outworks Aftyn’s campaign manager, Kate Briefs. She put together a primary win for State House that Nashville insiders thought was impossible. She did it again in the Congressional primary, and then she scared the living shit out of Mike Johnson and Donald Trump. I’m awarding her the superlative “most lethal Democratic campaign manager in Tennessee.”
Franklin Democrats
Five fucking precincts went blue in Franklin, Tenn. Read that again. That’s thanks to a long unbroken line of organizing that started with Coco Rogers’ run for State House in 2016 and continued right up to this special election. The credit can be widely shared among the women who lead the county party. Williamson County played a big role in swinging this state to the right 25 years ago, and I think the potential is there for the pendulum to swing back. It’s a trend that accelerates each cycle, even if it hasn’t matured into a win yet. But I stand by this prediction: Williamson County will start looking purple and it will feel very sudden to a lot of people. If you repeat last night in a local election, you elect Democrats to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and school board. In Franklin. To Republicans there, all I have to say is, “keep sleeping.”
Jody Barrett
Matt Van Epps beat his main primary challenger, Jody Barrett, handily, even before Donald Trump’s endorsement. But here’s one thing I know from experience: if the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, the arc of the Republican Party bends toward stupid. Matt Van Epps is going to enter office with a rabid-right faction who voted against Aftyn rather than for him. He’s likely to continue to disappoint people who are passionate about women’s swimming. He’s also unable to say anything that anyone notices, due to what appear to be intellectual limitations. An impatient and ambitious Jody Barrett could find solid footing against him, especially if MAGA doesn’t deliver results for the base.
Al Gore
Al Gore came out for Aftyn and gave a glowing endorsement that was hopeful about the future of Tennessee. That felt like a hex was un-hexed. The relationship between Al Gore and Tennessee Democrats collapsed after the 2000 race. He didn’t campaign here enough, and that hurt some feelings (and lost the race). After he lost, Democrats were scared to campaign with him. He said he wouldn’t run again in 2004, and then turned his attention to global issues. I don’t want to overhype a Zoom, but it felt really, really good to have Al Gore mixing it up. He actually did help invent the internet, he was really effective in raising the salience of climate change (remember global warming?), and he’s extremely Tennessee. Mike Pence cites his concession in 2000 as an influence on him during Jan. 6. You can see something that’s very admirable and very Tennessee in Al Gore. Tennessee is ready to embrace him for all that he is. I hope we see more of this.
Propaganda
We’re in a moment where traditional forms of news are losing influence to algorithmic media. It’s a struggle to debate policy in the context of a campaign, because only memetic content breaks through. “Aftyn Behn thinks men can give birth” and “she hates Nashville” gave Republicans a second wind with their base. As long as “men can’t give birth” holds attention you can sell to advertisers, every Democrat is stuck with it, no matter what they say. We don’t have debates, we have narrative warfare. “Matt Van Epstein is for billionaires” stuck. We need more of those narratives to win, not a halfway position between Planned Parenthood and Right to Life. Propaganda reminds everyone of Joseph Goebbels, but it’s not inherently evil. People need to hear stories they’re a part of and a simple way to understand the threat of the opposition. That doesn’t have to be a malicious lie.
LOSERS
Matt Van Epps
I’m sorry but that man is going to hate being in Congress. He has no ideology whatsoever. He is there to add Congressman to his resume. Maybe he believes he should be president, or wants to hop off to something more lucrative after he gets bored. He ended this race with negative name ID, in addition to positive name ID. He needed to squeak by with no name ID, so he can fart around with lobbyists while nobody notices. Instead, he’s got 81,044 people ready to ride his ass every day, and then ride for Aftyn again in November.
Mike Johnson
Here’s a blind quote from a Republican Congressman in D.C.: “If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged.” MAGA high priest and CD7 resident Robby Starbuck is in full meltdown mode and says MAGA could stay home if Congress doesn’t get some “wins.” In other words, he thinks it will get worse if the misery continues. I hate to say it, but that’s likely. Good luck Mike!
The Tennessee House GOP caucus
If these dynamics affect national races, they affect state races. More people should know this, but Tennessee has four to six flippable state House seats, which could really shake things up. Clarksville looks more flippable than ever, and like Williamson, it’s a bellwether for the state. Democrats have been dreaming about flipping Nashville suburbs for awhile. The path is more visible today than it was Monday.
Moderate Democrats
There’s a Mod Squad faction within the Democratic Party in Tennessee that does not want to run candidates who excite the base. Keep an eye out for “so and so would have won.” It’s bullshit. But for the sake of fairness, I’ll lay it out in generous terms: if we side-step the culture war and focus on Issues That Matter, we’ll win more and have a stronger hand to protect vulnerable people. I think that argument can be well-intentioned, but it doesn’t hold up. It supposes a hypothetical voter—economically liberal and socially conservative—that I don’t think exists. Even if the data points that direction, you can’t actually side-step the culture war. You still have to overcome industrial propaganda designed to make every moderate Democrat into a Marxist sex freak. I can also tell you that the moderate play has been tried a lot in Tennessee and failed. If “I am for 10 things my poll says you agree with” worked, we would be in a better place, but it doesn’t. Voters vote on vibes, not a checklist of issues. I don’t fully know what a better approach looks like, but I think it looks more like Aftyn’s campaigns than campaigns of the past. “Pot for potholes” has more legs than “we should reduce the enhancements for drugs in a school zone.” That doesn’t mean the school zone thing was bad. It means if you can connect in an authentic way, voters are less likely to believe ghost stories about you. As more data on the race becomes available, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any evidence that pedal taverns or trans men were a decisive issue for truly persuadable voters. My guess is no.
The Affordable Care Act
Obamacare will totally collapse if Congress lets the enhanced premium tax credits expire. In a more civilized society, that would have been the No. 1 issue for most voters. It’s just bad for the world that Matt Van Epps was able to win without addressing the issue at all. People do care about it, but he’ll go to Washington believing they don’t. I respect the hell out of Aftyn for bringing it up in her concession call.
What’s next
This wasn’t an end. It was a beginning. If you knocked your first doors for Aftyn, come to the state Capitol in January and see her live. Watching a legislative committee is the most radicalizing thing you can do in Tennessee. But above all, don’t give up. Keep going.
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