Last night I attended the TN Democratic Party’s Three Star Dinner in Nashville, where people from every corner of the state gathered to discuss our fight to turn Tennessee blue. Resolute is the word that comes to mind.

The guy who brought the house down was keynote speaker Hill Harper, an actor and activist who managed to be entertaining while also throwing out some hard truths:

We’ve been outworked. While Republicans in Tennessee were playing the long game, putting boots on the ground and engaging voters in every single election for forty years, most Democrats were doing the bare minimum: voting and assuming that generational momentum would carry us forward. I’m as guilty as anyone.

We’re in an existential crisis. Republicans aren’t just a threat to our human rights and quality of life. They’re a threat to democracy itself. Nowhere is that clearer than in Tennessee, where political extremists have used gerrymandering, fearmongering, dark money, and voter suppression to keep themselves in power.

We have to save ourselves. The Montgomery County Democratic Party, in Clarksville, proved what can happen when good people get organized and put in the hard work. They opened their field office just this year. In August they won eleven of their fourteen races, flipped two seats on their county commission, and protected their pro-neighborhood-schools majority on their school board. And they’re just getting started.

Allison
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