Aftyn The Lovin'

Winning by losing?

Democrats are actually celebrating the results of the special U.S. House election in Tennessee's Seventh Congressional District, in which Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn, below, lost - yes, lost - by about eight percentage points to her MAGA Republican opponent Matt Van Epps.

Aftyn Behn - whose name sounds like a Philadelphia suburb in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania - is a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who ran for the vacant U.S. House seat in her district and campaigned on affordability, which is an issue even in a low-tax, no-services Southern state.  While she lost by eight points, Donald Trump had carried the district by twenty-two points in 2024.  Democrats are celebrating this as a moral victory because it means that maybe, just maybe, in other districts that are more competitive,  the Democrats can swing the vote by as many percentage points and overwhelm and defeat their Republican opponents.

That's as may be, she still lost.

And she lost in a state that is best known for producing moderate Democratic U.S. Representatives like Harold Ford, Jr., Jim Cooper, and, before he went to the Senate, Albert Gore (who remains the last Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee - in 1990).  Behn is clearly a progressive - so progressive that she can't stand country music despite living in Nashville.

Which is why there won't be a rematch between her and Van Epps in November 2026.  Democrats don't get second chances when they lose, and they're not allowed to make comebacks.  If you disagree, I have a "Dukakis in '92" campaign button to sell you.

Not to mention an "Al Gore in '04" bumper sticker. 

Sorry, Aftyn.  Nice try.  You failed.  But at least you still have your House seat in Nashville.  Look to work your way up in the Tennessee House, because you will never get to Washington.

The Tennessee Waltz

Tennessee, the adopted state of imperialist President James K. Polk and racist President Andrew Johnson, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, and the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, expelled two black state legislators named Justin - Justin Jones and Justin Pearson - for peacefully protesting for gun control in the well of the state House of Representatives in Nashville in the aftermath of a school shooting in the city over a week earlier.  A third representative, a white female Democrat named Gloria Johnson, who also protested against guns, was also up for expulsion but kept her seat.  And not because she wasn't a man named Justin.

American state legislatures have done a lot of dumb things, such as criminalizing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, restricting the teaching of black history, banning gender-affirming care for transsexual children, and banning the playing of Randy Newman's "Short People" on the radio  (the last one is a law in Maryland - really), but this is the topper.  The Republican supermajority, beholden to the gun lobby and refusing to do anything about it, has just punished two black men in the Tennessee legislature for calling them on it by throwing them out.  They've sent a message to anyone opposed to them that there is a price to pay for expressing opposition to their agenda.  The Tennessee House Republicans may have let Gloria Johnson off the hook now, but the expulsion of Jones and Pearson has made it clear to her that she'll be next if she pulls this stunt next time.

This has happened even as an untold number of demonstrators - many if not most of them young people - descended on the Tennessee legislature demanding action on assault weapons because it made more sense than writing their legistors a bunch of e-mails.  Not only are Tennessee Republicans refusing to listen to them, they're likely to have them arrested  and cleared out just like the young people of the now-forgotten Occupy Wall Street movement who were cleared out of Lower Manhattan.  Once they're out of the way, life will go on and no one will care.

Lawrence O'Donnell says that, while it may not look like it, the forces of good are winning.   Not likely, not in this lifetime; every time America looks like it's making progress, a long, dark period of backsliding is inevitable.

Latter Days

At the annual Nuremberg rally - er, Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump revealed the Coming of the Apocalypse by declaring to be the "warrior, justice and retribution" of all those patriots and defenders of the state who have been sinned and libeled against by the radical left.

Also, at the same underattended conference, 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, speaking to a bunch of empty chairs,  made a statement that was as well reported as the conference was attended.  She said that "wokeism" is a virus more deadly than a zoonotic virus of any pandemic.  This is going on while anti-abortion governors crack down on abortion pill distribution.  Walgreens has already decided not to offer abortion pills in at least twenty states. 

And though black women like April Ryan and Zerlina Maxwell say it's up to the sistas to save America, Fani Willis, the one sista who could actually do that by indicting Trump for illegal interference in the 2020 Georgia presidential electoral college vote, might not get that chance.  A bill quickly circulating through the Georgia state legislature will give the state government the authority to remove district attorneys like Willis for abuse of power, defined as "black women who investigate and obviously hate white men."  This racist bill will allow Trump to escape indictment in the one slam-dunk case against him, although he says he will continue running for President if he's indicted to fulfill his promise of destroying the bleeding-heart liberals who want to make us give up our American way of life.

This is happening as the Florida state legislature may consider a bill "canceling" the Florida Democratic Party for its support of racism . . . in the 1850s and 1860s - while Ron DeSantis continues to ban black history from being taught in schools . . . even in February. 

And in Tennessee, the governor has singed a bill outlawing drag shows, which will likely punish cable providers with fines and imprisonment for their corporate officers if they air "RuPaul's Drag Race" in the state.  (Yeah, and maybe they'll ban Hillary Clinton from visiting Tennessee for being a drag king - those pantsuits!)  The RuPaul program, a celebration of drag-queen culture, is a favorite of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who, to the Make America Great Again crowd, is an obvious obstruction to their agenda, and she is clearly un-American for her solidarity with transsexuals and for her environmentalist agenda, and of course every true-red MAGA Republican knows what a threat to the Republic AOC and Jennifer Lopez are as Puerto Rican women for their solidarity with undocumented immigrants as well as J-Lo's anti-American, pro-migrant, indecent 2020 Super Bowl halftime show performance, the likes of which are likely to be banned in Tennessee if the Super Bowl is ever held in the state. 

I just have one question . . .

When did this country suddenly become Utah?

The last days are here.  Blow your trumpet (or your harmonica), son.