You Might Be Right

Live from The Howard Baker Policy Summit. Recorded just two days after the 2026 midterms at the inaugural Howard Baker Policy Summit, Governors Bredesen and Haslam are joined by return guest Heather Long, Chief Economist, Navy Federal Credit Union, and James Hohmann, Deputy Opinion Editor, The Washington Post, to debrief the election. What should each party take from the night? How are the country’s, and the state’s, political coalitions changing? And what do those shifts mean for the policy environment that business leaders will be navigating over the next decade?

What motivates young voters – and will they show up at the polls? In this episode of You Might Be Right, Governors Bredesen and Haslam are joined by Dan Cox, director and founder of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at AEI, and Rob Griffin, a Senior Director in the democracy practice at Third Plateau, to dig into the political awakening of younger Americans, the largest voting-eligible generation in American history. The episode opens with a special conversation featuring Tyler Rafferty and Madeline Rust, students at the Baker School at the University of Tennessee, who share what they see as the major issues heading into the midterms.

Issues like affordability, AI, and immigration are fueling populist sentiments across the political spectrum. In this episode, Governors Bredesen and Haslam are joined by Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and a founding partner at Echelon Insights, and Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss how Republicans and Democrats are recalibrating their strategies and party platforms to resonate with voters' concerns. Is populism on the left and right being driven by the same concerns? What do these shifts mean for the upcoming midterm elections?

Governors Bredesen and Haslam are joined by Michael Strain, Director of Economic Policy Studies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, to discuss the defining issue of the 2026 midterms: the rising cost of living. Are we really in the middle of an affordability crisis? If so, what can the government do about it?

What does it mean for voters when the politicians get to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around? In this episode, Governors Haslam and Bredesen pull back the curtain on redistricting and gerrymandering, the once-obscure process now at the center of America’s fiercest political battles. The Governors speak with Jonathan Rodden, professor of political science at Stanford University, and Sam Wang, founder and director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and the Electoral Innovation Lab, about fair maps, how the newly drawn district lines might impact this midterm election and the implications for future elections.