The Machine Is Screaming Because It’s Scared
Two clips, one manufactured outrage cycle, and a Republican establishment reacting like something real is slipping out of its hands.
There’s a particular smell to political panic. It’s sharp, frantic, a mix of entitlement and fear that seeps out whenever the people who’ve held power for far too long suddenly feel the ground shift under their feet. You can read it in the tone of their posts, in the speed of their attacks, in the way they’re trying to turn an entire congressional race into a referendum on a four-year-old podcast clip about pedal taverns. And you can hear it even louder in the things they’re not talking about… the hospital closures, the corruption, the cover-ups, the schools being gutted, the cost of living grinding families down.
And if you listen closely enough, the noise they’re making right now isn’t outrage.
It’s fear.
Because for the first time in a long time, TN-7 isn’t behaving the way it’s “supposed” to. Let’s start with the obvious. Aftyn Behn was not supposed to be competitive in TN-7. She wasn’t supposed to get traction. She wasn’t supposed to get national media. She wasn’t supposed to force millions of dollars in outside GOP spending. She wasn’t supposed to have the DNC sending in organizers. She wasn’t supposed to show up on political shows with national audiences. She wasn’t supposed to be a problem.
But she became one.
A young progressive woman is getting national media coverage normally reserved for battleground states. She’s on major podcasts, in national outlets, on the radar of people who don’t waste a second on hopeless races. When Vice President Kamala Harris is discussing a Tennessee congressional candidate on Tim Miller’s Bulwark podcast… that’s not a coincidence. When Aftyn Behn is invited onto Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast and Kurt Andersen to talk about flipping a district the GOP usually sleepwalks through… that’s not luck. When Axios and The Guardian keep circling back to TN-7 in their election rundowns… that’s not random.
Something is happening here. And the GOP’s reaction is the proof.
If Republicans believed this race were in the bag, they would treat Aftyn the way they treat every other Democrat running in a district like this. With silence. Indifference and a shrug. But that’s not what they’re doing. Instead, they’re behaving like a building with the fire alarms ripped off the wall.
In the span of a week, the reaction has been almost frantic. They started with the easiest target they could find (a clipped four-year-old podcast moment where Aftyn complained about what Nashville has become) and tried to inflate it into a character trial. The RNC blasted it out as if Broadway tourism were the moral spine of the nation. Marsha Blackburn jumped in right on cue, reciting her script with the conviction of someone who hasn’t had an unsupervised thought since the Bush administration. Riley Gaines, Laura Loomer, and every online outrage merchant with a ring light tried to out-perform one another. Republican operatives dug up protest footage from 2020 and acted like it was filmed yesterday.
And just as that first storyline started to sag under its own absurdity, a second clip surfaced (the hallway outside of former Tennessee Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office) and the machine jolted into an even higher gear. That is the real tell.
They seized on the video instantly. They circulated it like it was a gift. Aftyn startled, shouting out in pain and fear as she’s physically grabbed and pulled down the hallway. And they pushed it as proof of everything they needed her to be. She’s “unhinged,” “emotional,” “unfit”… as if the reason she was there didn’t matter.
But the reason matters more than anything. She was confronting the most powerful man in Tennessee about why he helped cover up the sexual assault of minors by a Republican lawmaker. She was asking the questions they refuse to ask. She was standing in the place they refuse to stand.
That is what she was facing. That is what she was reacting to.
That is the truth they’re trying to bury beneath their mockery.
Because if voters remember that moment for what it actually was (a woman demanding accountability from a corrupt system that protects the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable) the entire GOP storyline collapses. They can’t defend Sexton. They can’t justify the cover-up. And they certainly can’t afford for voters to see the contrast between someone who shows up when children are harmed and a political machine that only shows up when their polling softens.
So they’re trying to drown all of that out with a Broadway gripe from 2020.
Not because the Nashville complaint matters (or isn’t something half this city mutters under their breath when they’re trapped behind traffic on Murfreesboro Pike) but because the reality behind the hallway clip does.
They need this race to be about vibes and tourism and “Tennessee values,” not about the state they’ve gutted for a decade. They need voters arguing about pedal carts because they can’t defend why maternal mortality is skyrocketing. They need MAGA influencers screaming about bachelorette parties because they can’t explain why rural hospitals keep closing. They need this entire race to be about personality because the policy landscape they built collapses under the slightest sunlight.
If you want to understand the truth of this race, ignore the clips.
Watch the reaction.
Watch the speed with which they descended on Aftyn this week. Watch how frantically they’re trying to define her before she defines herself. Watch how desperate they are to make this campaign about anything except their own record.
Power doesn’t behave like this when it’s safe.
It behaves like this when something is slipping… and something is slipping.
For the first time in years, people in TN-7 are being asked to imagine a future that isn’t predetermined. A future where their vote actually matters, where their lives aren’t background scenery for politicians more invested in cable hits than communities. Aftyn is talking about the things Republicans have stopped talking about entirely. The healthcare deserts, the teacher exodus, the price of groceries, the cost of insulin, the weight carried by families who’ve been told for too long that their suffering is just the price of living here.
Voters are responding.
And the GOP heard it before the public did.
That’s why they’re screaming. That’s why they’re clawing at old audio files. That’s why they’re summoning every culture-war influencer they can find. They are trying to smother momentum with noise before anyone realizes the noise is the tell.
And here’s what should scare them most: this race isn’t over.
It feels wide-open.
Early voting ends tomorrow (the 26th). Election Day is December 2. The window is small, but the opportunity is real. And if you’ve ever wanted to prove that red-state politics are not destiny (that organizing can crack even the places written off as hopeless) then this is that moment.
If you can give, give. If you can volunteer, volunteer… calls can be made from anywhere. If you can share this with someone who hasn’t been paying attention, do it now.
This is not just a congressional race.
It’s a pressure test for an entire political narrative.
And the people who’ve ruled this state for a generation are showing you exactly how scared they are that the narrative might finally break.
Let’s give them a reason.
Thank you, Chase. Everyone's enthusiastic about Aftyn, and I was wondering how she was handling the alleged negativity about Nashville. Now I feel much better and am better-informed.