There’s an old saying that the best day to have planted a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today.
I was thinking of that last Tuesday, as the results from the Tennessee special election came in. You’ve no doubt read about Aftyn Behn’s race in TN-07, and the 13 point shift towards Democrats in a district that’s been gerrymandered to be Republican safe haven.
Aftyn may not have won the race outright, but her overperformance rightly sparked conversation about what it could mean for 2026, and whether Democrats are finally finding their footing, particularly in Red America. Those are good questions.
But the nagging question in my mind was … a little different. Because it was based on my knowledge that a significant chunk of the territory in which Aftyn ran hasn’t seen investment by Democrats in quite some time. It makes her performance in the special election even more impressive, frankly – because not only did she not have nominees above and below her helping turn out and educate voters, but she couldn’t rely upon infrastructure.
So my question wasn’t what Democrats could take from the election for 2026 – but whether we’ll finally wake up and realize it’s time to plant some darn trees.
We think about special elections as being litmus tests for party enthusiasm, and that’s true. But they’re also a test of sheer brute strength, infrastructure, foundation, and capacity. Because this was a special election, Aftyn Behn had to hold up the entire election all on her own.
While she absolutely had help from coalition partners, the party, local leaders, and folks across the country, she was the only thing on the ballot. There were no campaigns turning out voters below her, no nominees running statewide above her – no local or municipal or statewide nominees shouldering any of the burden of turning out and educating voters.
In the context of elections, the more people who are trying to turn out voters, the more voters will turn out. When you have candidates up and down the ballot, you have more volunteers knocking doors, more yard signs in neighborhoods, more energy mobilized.
Aftyn Behn didn’t have a lot of existing infrastructure or foundation to rely on. The races within Tennessee’s seventh congressional district – the state house and state senate races – have often been underfunded or completely uncontested.
That means there hasn’t been much focus on building the local political infrastructure needed in order to marshal as many resources as possible in a short amount of time. And that’s what you need to effectively compete in a special election. The volunteer networks, the relationships with local leaders, the familiarity with voters – all of that takes time to build.
We talk about “infrastructure” all the time, but think about what it actually means. It means having volunteer lists you can activate quickly instead of starting from zero. It means long standing relationships with local newspapers, with community organizations, with the people who get things done. It means voters seeing Democrats showing up – not just in election years, but consistently.
It means when a special election gets called, you’re not scrambling to figure out where to even start.
And in many Red districts across this country, we simply haven’t been building it.
As Democrats, we often focus our attention on the flippable districts in the flippable states. That means in so-called Red States like Tennessee resources are even more limited. So the focus is often on simply holding on to the blue bastions that are left and investing resources into flipping those that look most promising.
That’s not a bad political instinct, and it’s not a bad strategy from one election to the next. It makes sense – you have limited money, limited staff, limited time. You put your resources where they’ll have the biggest immediate impact.
But I don’t think anyone can look at where we are as a political party and believe that the strategy we’ve been using has been a winning one over the last 20 years.
We’ve ceded enormous swaths of this country. We’ve let entire regions become one-party states, where once robust Democratic infrastructure has withered or disappeared entirely.
That looks like county Democratic parties that may exist on paper but haven’t held a meeting in years. It looks like entire congressional districts where Democrats don’t even bother to field candidates for state legislature. It looks like voters in these districts going years – sometimes decades – without seeing a Democrat knock on their door or hearing a Democrat make a case for their vote.
It looks like working-class voters concluding that Democrats don’t care about them or their community because we simply haven’t shown up.
And then we wonder why these voters don’t trust us. We wonder why our message isn’t getting through. We wonder why MAGA propaganda dominates these spaces.
It’s simple. It’s because we left.
And you can’t counter a message you’re not there to deliver.
We’ve created a situation where someone like Aftyn Behn has to build a winning campaign essentially alone, without the foundation that should have been there for her to step into.
I think that if, in 2005, we had planted the seed of running everywhere and running supported candidates everywhere, we would be in a very different place than we are right now.
We wouldn’t be talking about how we need to get back into rural spaces because we would never have left. We wouldn’t be talking about how we need to be more engaged with working class Americans because we wouldn’t have left the districts where working class Americans live. We wouldn’t be talking about how we need to beat back political messaging from huge MAGA right wing stations because we already would have the political infrastructure to do that very thing on the ground.
We wouldn’t be rediscovering that people in red districts are hungry for someone to fight for them. We would already know it, because we’d have been there all along.
The progress in Tennessee should be a wake-up call. Not because it shows that Democrats can win in Red districts – though it absolutely does show that. But because it shows what we could accomplish if we actually invest in building infrastructure everywhere, not just in the places that look immediately winnable.
The reason we haven’t been able to sit in the shade is the decision we made not to plant a tree 20 years ago.
Now we need to decide whether or not we want to plant a tree today.
Because if we don’t – if we keep making the same strategic calculations that prioritize short-term wins over long-term infrastructure – we’ll be having this exact same conversation in 2045. We’ll be celebrating progress in another special election in another Red district, and wondering why we don’t have more support built up. We’ll ask why we seem to keep having to start from scratch.
Or we can decide that every district deserves a candidate. Every race deserves support. Every community deserves to see Democrats showing up and fighting for them.
That doesn’t mean throwing unlimited resources at every race. But it does mean running candidates, helping them build basic infrastructure, making sure no one has to run completely alone. It means playing the long game – planting trees today, even when we won’t see the shade for years.
I’m happy to share some good news. Because some of us are already planting.
In 2024, Every State Blue and Blue Tennessee supported three of the state legislative districts that nest within TN-07. All ESB projects fund first those nominees that have the least. That means the districts that qualify for Blue TN support are by their very nature those that have the least funding – typically places that have been written off, ignored, left to fend entirely for themselves.
These are not sexy races that get national attention or big checks. They’re state house and state senate seats in districts that haven’t elected a Democrat in a generation. The kind of races where success is measured in building a volunteer team of 20 people instead of 5. Where progress is getting your vote share above 30%.
But when you support these candidates, you’re not just helping one race. You’re building a volunteer network that will be there for the next election. You’re establishing relationships with people who will remember that Democrats showed up. You’re training campaign staff who will go on to run other campaigns or become the candidate themselves. You’re creating the foundation for more progress, and, ultimately, for wins.
That’s what infrastructure looks like. Not a single big investment, but sustained support over time. Not chasing the race that looks winnable today, but building the capacity that makes races winnable tomorrow.
We’ve been doing this work. But the work of building infrastructure in every district, every state, is bigger than any one person or organization can handle alone.
If we’re serious about competing everywhere, about building real infrastructure, about planting trees whose shade we might not see for twenty years – we need a movement, not just an organization.
Aftyn Behn was able to do what she did because she’s exceptional and because the moment demanded it. Imagine what Democrats could do if we made sure no one had to be quite that exceptional, or quite that alone, ever again.
Imagine hundreds of Aftyn Behns across the South, across the Midwest, across rural America – all running with real support, real resources, real infrastructure behind them. Not having to be superhuman just to be competitive. Not having to build everything from scratch in a matter of weeks.
That’s the shade we could sit in twenty years from now. But only if we plant the tree today.
Alright, friend.
Let’s get to work.
Actions for the Week of December 9, 2025
Friend, things may be heavy – but you can lighten that load by doing something small – a “small deed” – to bring about the world that you want to see. I call it Action Therapy.
That’s why in each Tuesday post I share a few “small things” – usually a Small Thing to Read, a Small Event to Attend, and a Small Call to Make or Action to Take. My intention here is to give you actions you can tuck into your week with ease – and know that you’re doing something today to make tomorrow better.
Join me in doing so. It matters.
Small Action to Take: Plant Some Trees!
If you’re inspired to pitch in and start helping us build infrastructure and capacity, I’m thrilled to hear it! You can learn more about Every State Blue at https://everystateblue.org and support us here. We are a scrappy grassroots organization, and every bit counts – so thank you in advance!
You can also join our Blue Missouri, Blue Ohio, and Blue Tennessee projects – which directly support nominees running in some of the reddest parts of the country. They appreciate it, and so do we! Do that here:
Small Call to Make:
As you know, the Trump administration has bombed small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that it claims are trafficking drugs bound for the US. There is no legal justification for the strikes that have killed more than 80 people.
Last week we learned that Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered in at least one of those strikes that there be no survivors – and a subsequent strike on shipwrecked survivors killed two men that apparently from footage were defenseless.
According to legal experts that is a war crime. According to anyone with a moral compass, that is wrong.
We need to see the video. We need an investigation and accountability. But first, we need the video.
H/T to the amazing Jessica Craven of Chop Wood Carry Water for this great script. Call your Senators/Reps at 202-224-3121.
Script: Hi, my name is (your name) and I’m a constituent at (your zip code or address). Congress must release the footage of the boat bombing on September 2. Americans deserve to decide for themselves whether those two shipwrecked sailors actually posed a threat. If what Hegseth did was legal he should have no fear of releasing the film. Please insist that he do so. Thanks.
Small Event to Attend: Blue Ohio/Every State Blue – Potential Candidate 101
If you’re considering running for state legislature in Ohio (or know anyone else who is) I hope you’ll join me, David Pepper, Rachel Coyle and the Blue Ohio team on Wednesday at 5:30 eastern for a Q&A with Ohio state house and senate caucus leadership. They’ll break down the process of running and answer questions. I’m really excited to participate in this discussion and to help support the next cycle’s candidates!
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/28a87PIUS5ywr_V6ytDiQg
Small Thing to Read: Money Doesn’t Buy Elections. It Buys Something Worse
This is an incredible piece by Adam Bonica, who writes On Data and Democracy.
This paragraph made me sit right up in my chair: The real story isn’t about the ads you see but the power you don’t. It’s about the candidates who never run, the policies that never get debated, and the slow, systemic drift of our democracy away from the will of the majority.
So often in my work I hear about people who would run – and would be great candidates and legislators – but don’t do so specifically because of money. Or, rather, their lack of money.
This is a great article, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to digest it:
Money Doesn’t Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.
4 days ago · 205 likes · 16 comments · Adam Bonica
Thanks for reading, friend – I’m glad to see you here! You’re making a difference, I promise.
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Small Deeds Done 