Tennessee Democrats tell folks NOT to vote for their candidate and he still gets 699,493 votes.  Just wow.

Once a yellow dog, always a yellow dog.

(Obviously) that message didn't get out very well.  To be honest, I don't pay a lot of attention to the TN Democratic party (for obvious reasons), and the only reason I knew what a troglodyte he is was from this board.  I neglected to tell my wife (because, really, who thinks to do that?) and she voted for Clayton. 

That tells you the absolute floor of TN Democratic votes is 700,000 or so.  Which isn't much.  Tennessee is about as red a state as there is any more, and I don't see it going purple for a long, long time.  Thankfully, we seem to elect as statewide leaders people who are not, to use John Boehner's phrase, knuckle-draggers.  We could do worse than Corker, Lamar and Haslam.  Not my first choice, but it could be worse.

I missed the memo.  What was the story with Clayton?

Agreed on Tenn's GOP caucus-they're about as "moderate" as Southern Republicans are allowed to get these days.  Part of that is because Alexander is an old-school Howard Baker type Republican.  Part of it, I think, is simply because Tenneseeans are basically nice people.  They don't go around displaying that nastiness you see out of some Deep South politicians.  Most white Tennesseans I know are very conservative, but it's not their style to go around running their mouths off all the time.

Your wife's a hate monger!!!!  Haha, I kid.

While 700K doesn't seem like much, consider Obama got 951K in total for TN... which means 3/4 of the TN Democrats simply pulled the blue handle.  And when you consider he was running for a Senate seat - the 2nd most important race on the TN ballot - and 3/4 of the Democrats voted for him tranlates to a lot of really uninformed voters.  Simply voting the party - or in the Mark Clayton case... voting the party name, not the party line (since it's obvious that Clayton is not a real Democrat)

NOTE:  I figure the Republicans that simply pull the red handle probably have a similar ratio

Pretty dissappointing to think that 3/4 of people (all people... D's and R's) who vote are probably uninformed.

CHIDORE... here's a Wash Post article about Clayton  The guy is a wacko that slipped through the cracks.  I'm guessing the TN Democrats doubted that anyone could seriously challenge Corker and didn't pay as much attention as they did to other races.

Sadly this is the state of the Democratic party is much of the Old Confederacy.  There simply is no bench anymore.  You had Bredesen, who possibly maybe coulda made a challenge after he was done as governor.  and that's IT

Harold Ford Jr was as close as it was gonna be for a long time.  It's very interesting how the political map has realligned, with the Dems being the national party of choice by a narrow majority of the national electorate, anr the Republicans being a regional party.  They are in complete control in most of the plains state and south and are almost extinct on the coasts and in the northeast. 

The closest thing you may see to a Democratic senator from Tenn. for a while is a political outsider running as an independent.  This is basically what New England Repulicans have become.

ChiDore wrote: This is basically what New England Repulicans have become.

as opposed to those centrists in Vermont who re-elected Bernie Sanders ...

Huh? I'm not sure what the point of that rather silly retort was. 


Republicans in New England have become Independents because they can't get elected against Democrats or wearing the "Republican" label.  What does that have to do with Bernie Sanders, other than to illustrate how left-leaning the New England electorate can be.

Look at the new senator from Maine, Angus King. His politics aren't very different from the outgoing R, Olympia Snowe.  But Maine doesn't elect new Republicans at the Federal level. 

geeznotagain wrote:

ChiDore wrote: This is basically what New England Repulicans have become.

as opposed to those centrists in Vermont who re-elected Bernie Sanders ...