A reenergized Tennessee Democratic Party held its annual Three Star Dinner Saturday night, rallying voters behind Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s just over a week into her new role as the party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee.
The event included remarks from keynote speaker, professor, author and preacher Michael Eric Dyson and surprise special guest Rep. Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland's 8th Congressional District. The dinner took place in Nashville's Omni Hotel, just feet from the Music City Center — where, hours before, former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference.
“Now, I don't want to alarm everyone, but we did get credible reports of a multiply convicted felon loose across the street just a few hours ago,” Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell joked at the event. “Fortunately, we've secured the area, and the threat to democracy has ended for tonight.”
Dyson railed against Trump, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, and the activist wives of some of the justices, whom he called “the real enemies of American democracy.”
“They are led by a man who is proud to be unmolested by enlightenment — ‘dumbassery’ is his middle name,” Dyson said.
“We know what we're dealing with, with that man,” he continued. “That's why Kamala is coming — to bring intelligence, to bring refinement, to bring commitment to American democracy.”
Raskin called the GOP the “banana-Republican Party” and “authoritarian cult of personality,” characterizing Trump's vice presidential running mate, Ohio’s U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, as a “chameleon, opportunist, Ivy League ‘shillbilly.’”
“Democracy is always an unfinished project — it is a process in motion, moving forward,” Raskin said, calling for an end to the electoral college and championing the role of women in this year's elections. “Today American women, with Kamala Harris in the forefront, are going to lead us in restoring and resurrecting and reviving American freedom.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks at Three Star Dinner in Nashville, July 27, 2024
Those women include state House Minority Leader Karen Camper and state Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, who also spoke to the crowd of hundreds.
“We're the Volunteer State, but we were the first state to pledge all of our delegates to the vice president — I mean, really, we shocked the hell out of everybody, right?” Akbari said. Camper, meanwhile, argued that a Harris administration would “usher in a new era of progress and prosperity.”
This was the final Three Star Dinner under the leadership of party chair Hendrell Remus, who has served in the role since 2021. Remus made history as the first Black chair of the state party. Last month, the TNDP named Brian Córdova as its next executive director.
“The power of our party is not in one person, it's not the chair, it’s not the candidate running for office, it’s not the folks who are knocking on doors or donating money to the campaign,” said Remus. “It's about the folks who are willing to stand up and say, ‘I know politics is draining, but I'm going out to vote, and I'm taking something with me.’
“You have the power as people,” he continued. “We have the power as a party, but we have to decide: What are we going to do with it? What type of difference are we going to make?”
