Thu
Jan 29 2009
12:44 pm
Wherefore art thou, Tennessee Democrats?
By: R. Neal

Tennessee politics has become a TNGOP free-fire zone, with Hobbs and Company firing at will at any moving target with impunity. There's no return fire, the Democratic Party appears to have gone MIA or deserted, and our distress signals have vanished into the ether unanswered.

But maybe we are jumping the gun, so to speak.

For all we know, newly elected TNDP chair Chip Forrester is hunkered down in the bunker with the top political generals and money men from around the state, laying out the battle plan, drawing up the maps and supply lines, and putting together an arsenal of ideas that will blow us away with its brilliance and audacity when it's unleashed.

Hey, it could happen!

Anxiously awaiting the bombshell announcement...

Topics:
bizgrrl's picture

It could happen!

Submitted by bizgrrl on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 12:53pm.

It could happen!

newscoma's picture

I've been preaching this as

Submitted by newscoma on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 12:54pm.

I've been preaching this as well.
**sigh**

(link...)

vibinc's picture

Why do we act...

Submitted by vibinc (not verified) on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:01pm.

like the campaign is only between Labor Day and Election day. The TNGOP recognizes that the campaign is FOREVER. We should come to recognize this too.

When we stop, we create a vacuum that the GOP can exploit. I just don't get why they don't get it.

Christian's picture

Communication goes a long way

Submitted by Christian (not verified) on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:08pm.

Yesterday, we learned our President met "in the tank" with the Joint-Chiefs. Who knows what they said or what they decided. What we know is our President is presidenting and taking the threats we face seriously.

What do we know the TNDP leadership is doing, achieving or planning? We don't.

If we can know what our President is doing in the most secure location on planet earth, then TN Dems deserve to be able to follow the story of our party's progress. Right now, there is no story of progress. There is only silence. This party cannot afford to continue to operate in a 1995 mode of communicating in 2009.

KC's picture

Again, I don't think it's

Submitted by KC on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:10pm.

Again, I don't think it's always necessary to respond to everything. Maybe it is when you're in a campaign, but if you're not, you might just allow yourself to be dragged down in the mud.

Hobbs and some others might be a little over-confident right now, although the disaster in the House should have been a warning that nothing's certain.

Playing smart doesn't always mean playing along, or playing a game where you allow the opposition to write the rules, or even playing the same game.

The more the TNGOP keeps talking, the more it exposes itself. If your opponent's digging a hole for himself....

Andy Axel's picture

If your opponent's digging a

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:23pm.

If your opponent's digging a hole for himself....

They may be digging holes, but we keep falling into them.

____________________________

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

KC's picture

They may be digging holes,

Submitted by KC on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:29pm.

They may be digging holes, but we keep falling into them.

Why is that?

Andy Axel's picture

Wish I knew. Stupidity?

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:50pm.

Wish I knew. Stupidity? Short-sightedness? Incompetence? Corruption? Laziness? Lack of imagination? Inertia? Arrogance? Ineptitude? Consolidating a legacy of accumulating failures going back about a decade? Insanity (doing the same things and expecting different results)? Self-fulfilling prophecy (state leadership constantly opining on the record that "Tennessee is a Republican state")?

____________________________

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

KC's picture

That narrows it down. Here's

Submitted by KC on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 2:07pm.

That narrows it down.

Here's my view.

If you look at how the Republican party changed, it seems to me that some leaders, or activists, inside and outside of the party, saw an opportunity when a group of the population who became fed-up with what they perceived as a cultural laxness, and that feeling was manipulated and channeled into a political movement, and that group of the population become a significant group of voters, with the aim of removing Democrats from power.

That's probably over-simplistic, but in a nutshell that's how it changed. William Bennett, and others, had been preaching for a while before the Republican Revolutionaries attempted to legislate it.

What the Democrats need to figure out is how to take the anger that's out there now concerning the financial bailout and the lack of regulation in the markets, mainly due to a lack of enforcement, and turn that into a political movement.

It's much easier than it sounds, but it can be done.

Nobody's picture

The county parties will soon

Submitted by Nobody (not verified) on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 1:45pm.

The county parties will soon have their reorganization conventions and then we can see what Forrester has to work with across the state. If we keep electing the same folks to run the party in the counties we will have the same results again and again. It seems we just keep recycling them to different positions. Look around at the Democratic party, we have county chairs, that are on the state executive committee and so on, maybe all the way to the DNC. It seems they are so in charge they have multiple positions. Why? Are they over dedicated? Maybe no else is interested? Are they control freaks? For what ever reason to me it is like we are not running at full staff just a few people doing everything. Would it not be better to have one person in one position and open the other position to someone else. There would at least be more input and more people involved.
It is a shame we dont know what is going on in our party, the TNDP site has not changed in months except to let us know Obama and Forrester were elected. It could use a serious makeover too. Maybe R. Neal could help with that, Knoxviews seems fairly well managed and interesting.

Elrod's picture

The only ones pushing back are the blogs

Submitted by Elrod on Thu, 2009/01/29 - 4:44pm.

You never hear pushback from anybody in the TN Democratic Party. The only place you hear assertive and proud support for the party's values is in the blogosphere.

But remember that it was that way nationally until 2003 as well, when Howard Dean start channeling the blogosphere's anger into the mainstream. At first he was ridiculed and marginalized. But then others took up the mantle and the Democrats soared back into power.

It really does start with us. And it starts with getting good elected officials at all to make the case.

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