Democratic candidates in much of the Volunteer State, especially in its rural areas, face a steep hill to climb. Perhaps that is most true in East Tennessee, a region that has voted reliably red for decades.
Hamilton County, the urban anchor of Southeast Tennessee with Chattanooga as its seat, hasn’t voted for a Democratic county mayor since the early 1990s, and a majority of its voters haven’t cast a ballot for a Democratic president since Harry Truman in 1948.
The ideological leanings of both major parties have changed drastically throughout American history, but voters in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, centered around Knox County, have elected a Republican to Congress in every election cycle since 1867…