In red states, Democrats aren’t listening to their own

At the Old Fort Restaurant on 25th Street in Cleveland, Tennessee, Amanda and Don Willoughby, who are in their early seventies and semiretired, represent tiny blue dots swimming against the current in a Tennessee River of MAGA red. “Can’t get these every day,” Don says after spying the chicken dumplings special on the menu, adding wryly, “Could be squirrel.” Don’s bimonthly Texas Hold’em tournament gang comprises bricklayers and lawyers, county officials and painters, insulation guys, cops, and two former prisoners. They don’t talk politics much, but it’s a safe bet that Don, who started voting consistently Democratic in the Trump Era, would be in the partisan minority. Bradley County, of which Cleveland is the county seat, went for Trump by more than 78 percent, and voted Republican at almost precisely the same clip all the way down the federal ticket, even heavier at the state level. Don’s wife, Amanda, who eschews the restaurant’s panoply of meat-and-three offerings in favor of a salad, praises him for steering clear of the political chatter as her husband only goes so far as advising one interlocutor, “You need to check where you’re getting your news.” Don — who has strong Sam Elliott energy right down to the mustache, the droll humor, and the drawl — allows, “We don’t talk politics, but every now and then, someone will slip.” A gathering place, in a nation whose citizens can’t talk to one another, let alone new arrivals, is a rarity. A community built around a recreational activity shared in enjoyment where partisan acrimony does not infest and metastasize is a prize to be cherished and celebrated. This is the first presidential election Don has ever called wrong. Amanda was surprised by the results too, “because I didn’t think people were that stupid.” They are big-hearted people who open their home to folks down on their luck or in need of a place to stay for the time being. When Amanda thinks about the “vile, disgusting” victor of Tuesday’s election, she displays double middle fingers, thrusting them in the air left and right, and says, “I want to vomit every time he comes on TV.” If the obscene gestures are noticed in the packed diner — with Bible verses in cursive on the walls and crosses dotting the shelves — I’m sure they are perceived as directed to her companions at the table. Amanda is careful to state her opinions of the election results sotto voce. And it hits me again. Democrats have abandoned Amanda and Don too — true-believing, Harris-backing guerrilla warriors with neither hope nor expectation that the billions of dollars Democrats spend each election cycle, including midterms, will ever cross their horizon. Folks around here work hard. The Willoughbys recognize that not everyone has time to consume a diet of high-quality news, and that the broader, fragmented media landscape is perhaps not the most hospitable ecosystem for a well-informed citizenry to flourish. “Just the massive flow of garbage,” Amanda says. “And I think that won the election for Trump, and I think the news media won the election for Trump. They’d just focus on anything he did.” She hasn’t watched the news since election night. Don says he seeks news sources “in the middle” but that it is a vanishing middle. “I looked at the Internet, but you can’t believe anything that’s on there.” In addition to being the Bradley County seat, Cleveland, Tennessee, is a jewel on the Bible Belt. The Church of God, which counts around 6,000 churches across the nation, is headquartered in town. Don likes to say that every time a building becomes vacant around here, it becomes a church, even briefly, and estimates that about 300 churches stand across the county of a little more than 100,000 residents. Amanda says, like the media, the local religious infrastructure lined up behind Trump, leading the faithful to believe “God appointed Trump and he’s the savior.” Leaving Cleveland for parts southeast, I’m struck by the reality on the ground in the reddest parts of this country and the coverage of a seemingly different reality as seen in the preferred media outlets of those in the bluest parts of this country, where an anomaly is wished into a trend. You can leave the diner buoyed by your conversation with the Willoughbys, but to do so, you’d really need to ignore the political reality in the rest of the restaurant — and much of the country. This op-ed is an edited excerpt from Scott Ferson’s new book, “How the Democrats Lost America: Making Sense of the 2024 Election and the Future of American Politics.” Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.