Gloria Johnson Would Like To ‘Tennessee Three’-Step Marsha Blackburn Right Out Of US Senate
Gloria Johnson Would Like To ‘Tennessee Three’-Step Marsha Blackburn Right Out Of US Senate
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Marsha Blackburn is a moron — more of a TikTok parody of a beauty school dropout turned senator than an actual senior senator from Tennessee. We can barely keep up with her idiocy, though we do our best.
This summer, Blackburn claimed Democrats are coming for your “washing machine and your dishwasher and your fireplace, your lightbulbs, anything they can go after that is a convenience item that makes life easier at home.” (Yes, this genius thinks light and heat are modern-day conveniences.)
“They’re trying to change the standards on this in order to have people buy more efficient appliances!” she told Fox News. “And people don’t want that!” Efficient appliances that don’t fall apart or run up your power bill are for socialists!
Over Labor Day weekend, she also added “grills” to the list of convenience items that the Left wants to deny Americans. This obviously isn’t true, but Blackburn only ever knows enough about an issue to lie about it.
We’d love to rid Congress of this dullard but Tennessee is one of the most right-wing states in the nation. However, if anyone other than Taylor Swift has a shot next year when Blackburn is up for re-election, it’s Gloria Johnson of the now famous Tennessee Three. The badass Democratic state representative is officially running for Senate! Just a few months ago, few people outside of Tennessee or even Johnson’s own district knew her name, but fascist Republicans gifted her with a national profile after voting to expel her from the House because she joined a gun safety protest. (Johnson was white enough to narrowly avoid expulsion, unlike her Black colleagues Justin Pearson and Justin Jones.)
Johnson announced her candidacy outside Central High School in Knoxville where she once taught. There was a school shooting at Central High in 2008, and a student was killed. She’s never forgotten that traumatic experience, which informs her service.
“We need somebody that’s gonna care about Tennessee families and lifting them up and making sure that it’s them that we’re trying to cut costs and not cutting costs for corporations and billionaires,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to make sure that Tennessee families are earning a good wage, have access to affordable health care, have great schools for their kids, and can live in dignity and be able to retire.”
Those are real issues that affect actual Tennesseans and not a third-margarita rant about “damn libruls” taking your inefficient lightbulbs and precious guns that you use to shoot the lightbulbs when they burn out on you.
Johnson’s campaign ad contains more of this good stuff. We also learn that she’s 6 foot 3. Damn.
She rightly focuses on gun safety as an issue. “When will enough be enough?” she asks. “When will we elect leaders with the courage to stand up for us, instead of a bunch of bullies and cowards who only do what their party says.”
Blackburn’s face shares the screen with the highly descriptive words “bully” and “coward.” Johnson pressed that point in a social media post: “I’ve spent my life standing up to bullies, and Marsha Blackburn is the biggest bully I know. Now I'm running to replace her.”
Marsha Blackburn responded to Johnson’s announcement with a Whitman’s Sampler of MAGA buzzwords. She called Johnson a “radical socialist” who’s as “woke as they come.” This is Tennessee, so maybe it’s enough for Blackburn to just run against a strawman. However, Johnson doesn’t run away from what she believes, and that’s damn encouraging.
Her launch ad mentions how she had to sleep on the floor as a child to avoid getting shot by racists because her father brought the KKK to justice (wonder if that’s legal to teach in Tennessee). She stands proudly in images with Pearson and Jones. She stands up for abortion rights without apology or concession. Calling out bigots like Blackburn as “bullies” and “cowards” is emotionally resonant yet plain spoken.
Republican strategists are already mocking Johnson’s campaign (you can donate right here!) as a waste of money, but even if she loses, she will help set a model for how Democrats across the nation can stand up for their beliefs.
We also need to show everyone, including far too many “blue state” liberals, that good people live in “red states.” Gloria Johnson is but one of them.
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Wait. Isn't Marsha Blackburn literally a former hairdresser? Not that there's anything wrong with being a hairdresser, but let's face it. It's not exactly a qualification for being in the Senate.
Not that being a former football coach is, either. Looking at you, Alabama.
So glad to see this. We've had decent candidates run against Blackburn in the past, but they didn't have the national recognition that Johnson has been so helpfully gifted by those numpties in the state house. I hope she gives a good showing. She's unlikely to win, but I hope it's close enough to scare Hagerty (he's actually more batshit bananas than Marsha).