Stress Fractures

Running everywhere

If you’ve been reading me long, you know how I feel about running candidates in every district. Every race. Every ballot. Every state.

No seat uncontested, and no Republican with a free pass.

I watched the live returns from the special congressional race in Tennessee until the end last night. I sat in my office with the sound muted on the Steve Kornaki livestream while I listened to the Mizzou/Notre Dame basketball game in the living room.

Mizzou lost, but it was a buzzer-beater.

I try to spend as much time as I can with my husband and daughter in the evening, but I really couldn’t stand to not know what was going on in Tennessee, so I stayed in my office until they called the race.

You likely already know that Aftyn Behn lost her race last night. I don’t know much about her opponent except that his name is Matt Van Epps, and Trump put in a good word for him. That’s actually all I need to know.

Folks from Aftyn’s potential district lost out. She’s a fighter for her community. She has placed her body in front of State Troopers to save reproductive care. She was nearly kidnapped by a man in a ski mask from the Tennessee State House for standing with immigrants in Nashville.

She is the real deal. I hate that she did not win the race last night.

But that’s not what this essay is about. I am writing about the wins that happened last night because Aftyn Behn stood up and ran in a seat that had a +22 point margin for Trump just a year ago.

She reduced that margin by 13 points. Van Epps won the race by around 9 points.

I don’t think she lost anything. She created a shockwave I felt all the way over in Missouri.

I woke up this morning to the usual punditry…you know, Republicans rubbing Aftyn’s nose in it and some Democrats claiming that a centrist Democrat could have done better.

I don’t care about the Republican response. They support a 34-count felon who was convicted of sexual assault and has been credibly accused of raping children. And the Democrats who think a centrist would have done better have had their head in the clouds for a decade.

Aftyn over-performed. And that should scare the shit out of any Republican who won by less than 9 points.

Aftyn Behn joined me in 2023 to talk about rural organizing.

In my morning round-up of news and commentary, I ran across a Facebook post this morning by Kevin Bart. He stated this about the race for TN-7:

The district didn’t flip. It buckled. That twenty-two point Trump cushion collapsing into single digits is the political equivalent of a stress fracture on a main beam…this is how change starts. Not with a revolution. With a crack.

I could not have said it better, and I have been saying it for a long time.

Aftyn’s race caused a fracture in the solidly red district. She made it clear that Trump is not as popular as he was just a year ago, and that being a Trump Republican is losing its glossy veneer…even in Tennessee.

The shockwaves of a losing race may not reverberate everywhere, but from where I am standing, I know this is the movement I have been working toward. I feel the rafters shaking and the walls moving. I feel the aftershock of the work that went into Aftyn’s race and how it’s rippling out into red states across the country.

This movement keeps proving itself.

Democrats have had so many wins in the last few weeks, but when I show excitement and enthusiasm I am often met with despair, and I think it may be because some can’t see what I see.

I see rural people voicing discontent. I see rural people stepping up to run.

I was in central Missouri two weeks ago to speak to a room full of rural Democrats and two candidates for the State House were in attendance. Know what’s better than that? They both ran two years ago and are stepping up again. This makes their races easier — they have name recognition. They know their communities.

We can’t win if we don’t run, and they are making the sacrifice. Again.

I am in rooms across the Heartland, and I see the enthusiasm. I hear folks talking to their neighbors in rural spaces. They are putting up signs and gathering signatures and showing up in their communities proudly proclaiming their political party.

That may not sound like much but it is massive in rural spaces. Seismic.

There is no doubt that we will lose some races across the country when we run everywhere, but the point is to lose by less. Lose by fewer votes. Lose, but make progress.

And I want to tell you something, reader: don’t lose faith in the movement.

I know you may not see it where you are, but the earthquake is coming. Hold tight to my words…we can take back the House and eventually the country. We can rid ourselves of the fascists in power. We can claw our way back to democracy.

We do it with seismic shifts and slight tremors.

We do it by running everywhere and losing some of those races.

We do it by creating fractures on the main beam.

~Jess