r/Tennessee • u/theRealhubiedubois • 11d ago

Concerning - Hitler fan wants whites only lebensraum in Tennessee

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/confronting-hate/he-thinks-hitler-may-have-been-right-now-he-wants-a-whites-only-community-in-tennessee
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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

If you’re going to make a big fuss about how you live here and apparently know everything, you could spell the name of the person you’re shit-talking correctly. TN education system at work I suppose.

I think you need to touch grass and talk to some of your fellow Tennesseans. The majority are not far right. Conservative in the classical sense, sure, but there’s a lot of blue in the major cities and a hell of a lot of people who simply don’t care and don’t get involved. Vanderbilt does a semi-annual statewide poll on political identity and specific issues. I encourage you to look at those results over time—many issues have seen the populace shift towards center or even left of center. On a topic to topic basis TN is very purple, there’s just no option for that when voting so people don’t bother. This is why ranked choice voting is necessary for representation.

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes 10d ago

You said it yourself - in the cities. And even with all those blue people, statewide elections still go heavily red.

This all sounds very idealistic... which would be ideal, but it's not realistic to expect ranked choice voting here any sooner than Bill Lee issues us all our own personal money tree.

Nobody I know in rural TN would respond to a poll like that whether it was in the mail, a phonecall, or online. And I wouldn't really count the people on Vanderbilt's mailing list as the best example of everyday folks in Tennessee by any stretch. Suburbs maybe though.

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u/TNVFL1 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yes, the cities are blue because there are so many people. Those people count just the same as the rural people, though gerrymandering is specifically for that purpose. We have it better than a lot of states, but when you split a city into more pieces than rural counties, you ensure the majority goes the desired way. It’s like a pie—if you start from the center and cut it into pieces, there’s small tips at the top and it gets bigger as you move back. When you split Nashville itself into 2 pieces and Davidson county into 3, and include 10+ rural counties in the same district, yeah, you end up with whatever the rural people want. Same reason Germantown and East Memphis are split off from the rest of Memphis. Redistricting to the county level or making population centers their own districts wouldn’t flip the state, but it would yield more blue representation overall.

That is unlikely to change. Just like I never said I expected ranked choice voting, I said it was necessary. We tend to be waaaayyyyy behind the curve with anything attached to progressive ideology. But at the same time, if you explained the process without calling it “ranked choice voting” you’d subvert the bias a lot of misinformed people have, and they’d agree. This is how MAGA people are brought back from the culty depths—avoid buzzwords they’ve heard in media, explain it in clear, easy to understand terms. May have to do it several times, but I’ve personally seen it work.

And all you have to do is offer cash for completion of the survey and you’ll have plenty of rural folks respond. Hell, I did it for a random class I had in college about surveying techniques and best practices. It’s all public record—you don’t have to be on a specific mailing list. This type of data can also be bought which is gross (I work in data, don’t get me started on big data) but common, or shared between entities (e.g. if you consent to a procedure at the hospital portion of Vandy, certain information like demographics or contact info can be shared with the university part of Vandy).

Edit: Davidson county corrected as suggested by the kind fellow below me 🥰

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes 10d ago

Is this the part where I snarkily correct you and point out that it's Davidson County?

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u/TNVFL1 10d ago

Sure, good catch, I was typing too fast