The Next Level Down
Why electing Blackburn will plumb new depths
I remember driving past what would soon become a full-on MAGA house in my neighborhood back in 2018 and seeing signs for Moody, Black, and Blackburn. Lort! That sounded like some Dickensian law firm specializing in foreclosing on widows and orphans.
When I was growing up in Nashville, we had a mayor named Bill Boner who-true to his name-appeared on a talk show with a country singer named Traci Peel while still married to his third wife. Peel bragged to reporters that the mayor’s “passion” could last seven hours (this was pre-Viagra). Two years into their marriage, Boner was caught cheating. Aptonym, meet cautionary tale (Anthony Weiner was the sequel).
Speaking of names that match the résumé, it’s looking likely that Marsha Blackburn will be Tennessee’s first female governor. Marsha’s a Mississippi native with a home economics degree from Mississippi State who moved to Nashville in the 1970s to work as a dresser for socialites at Castner-Knott Department Store. From there, she floated up the Republican ranks during the Southern Strategy years-helped along by all the right connections, all the wrong values, and a practiced smile that concealed her political ruthlessness. And she made bank doing it.
In 2014, she weakened DEA enforcement by sponsoring the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, taking over $1 million from lobbyists in the process-and fueling an opioid crisis that has killed over 645,000 Americans. She’s fought against net neutrality (with big telecom money in her corner), opening the door for internet service providers to control and prioritize traffic for profit.
Her loyal, boot-licking devotion to Donald Trump makes her a near lock for the 2026 gubernatorial race. The MAGA machine has already made it clear they want absolute control by then, and Blackburn is as reliably prejudiced as they come-see her disgraceful 2022 interrogation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson-as well as a proven enemy to women’s rights.
But here’s what I don’t get: if Project 2025’s goal really is to put women “back where they belong”-barefoot, pregnant, and without the vote (as Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has openly suggested)-why does the GOP even bother with token female politicians? They’ve got a deep bench of misogynist male loyalists chomping at the bit. Why waste the time?
I also can’t ignore the part my own generation (Gen X) played in this. We took our rights for granted. We rolled our eyes at feminism. And even though nearly every woman I know has experienced assault, discrimination, or both, we still lived through the best era in history to be female. Our mothers and grandmothers fought for rights we assumed would always be there. We were wrong.
These days, the Tennesseans I work with-those paying attention-are tough, road-tested, and determined to hold the line. Every year at the close of the legislative session, someone says, “Well, this must be rock bottom.” This year alone, we’ve seen plans to strip public education from undocumented kids, to make it a felony for lawmakers to oppose Trump’s immigration policies, and to hand $1.6 billion of taxpayer money to out-of-state corporations. And yet-I know I speak for many when I say-electing Marsha Blackburn as our next governor wouldn’t be rock bottom. It would be the next level down.