Democratic consultant says 'AOC of Tennessee' not a 'serious' candidate, warns party losing grip on extremists

Democratic consultant Julian Epstein called out Aftyn Behn the AOC of Tennessee on Sunday insisting the progressive vying to succeed Rep Mark Green is not a very serious candidate She's certainly an extreme candidate She declared she hates Nashville where she would represent She's for defunding the police a whole host of very far-left sort of Democratic socialist ideas Epstein commented on Fox News Live I think this reflects two failures on the part of the Democratic Party he continued It used to be a generation ago that the Democratic leadership say Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries would be able to stop far-left candidacies like this by using the state Democratic apparatus and the donor apparatus to make sure that you had centrist candidates that would have a better chance of winning and that would reflect well on the Democratic Party generally and that infrastructure has just collapsed DEM HOUSE HOPEFUL GETTING YANKED FROM GOVERNOR'S OFFICE DURING ATTEMPTED SIT-IN GOES VIRAL AHEAD OF BALLOT The Democratic leadership no longer has that kind of control that they did and that's why you see extremist candidates emerging around the country The other failure he revealed lies in the Democratic Party's inability to articulate ideas that appeal to an increasingly disaffected youth That's why you get bad ideas that have sensational online appeal why you have those ideas starting to gain more interest amongst particularly again as I say the disaffected and the unhappy youth he added DEMOCRATS REPUBLICANS GO ALL IN ON FINAL CONGRESSIONAL BALLOT BOX SHOWDOWNBehn a Democratic state representative and former healthcare public organizer is running against Republican nominee Matt Van Epps to represent Tennessee's th Congressional District which includes parts of the Democratic stronghold of Nashville The winner will succeed former GOP Rep Mark Green who stated his resignation from office in June to take a private-sector job Behn caught flak from the Republican National Committee RNC for a resurfaced podcast in which she described how she hate s Nashville and all the things that make the city an it city to the rest of the country Kate Briefs campaign manager for Aftyn Behn for Congress previously stated Fox News Digital in a comment Republicans are panicking and in a last ditched attempt they are distracting from the fact that Washington Republicans and Matt Van Epps are raising costs on Tennessee families and ripping away their vitality care while Aftyn Behn will lower Tennessee families' costs and make groceries more affordable by eliminating the state's grocery tax Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this statement