One of y’all wrote to me and asked ” how a single individual can contribute to the Democratic cause here in Tennessee.”
And, frankly, I don’t know. I mean, I became an internet curmudgeon, but I can’t say that that’s been a very appreciated, or even noticed, contribution to the Democratic cause.
But, I think we’re starting at square one here. And since we’re starting at square one, we can ask ourselves some very basic questions.
1. Why are we Democrats? What is it about the Democrats that appeals to me? In other words, what do I stand for politically and why do the Democrats in general provide the best fit for me?
2. Are there places where I’m willing to compromise? For me, I could support a pro-gun candidate without thinking twice. But frankly, I find Democrats who oppose gay rights to be too cowardly for my taste. We live in a state where people who don’t seem like “normal” heterosexual people get beat up and killed. If you can’t stand before your constituents and say that everyone who lives in Tennessee has the right to live here free from harassment and threat of bodily injury even if you yourself are uncomfortable with what kinds of people they are, then fuck you. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in full equality and gay marriage and the whole scary liberal shebang, but I live in a state where we’re still fighting over whether people who don’t meet some heteronormative standard have the right to exist and have their existence acknowledged. And I want even conservative Democrats to be willing to say “Yes, all the different kinds of people in Tennessee do actually exist and have the right to do so free from harm.”
That should not be too radical for any Democrat.
And don’t even get me started on women’s rights. God.
You may have some other standard.
3. Are there candidates that best represent my values? What can I do for those individual candidates?
And then, and only then,
4. What are the goals of the State party? How are they meeting them? What can I do to help?
I don’t know. Like Rachel Maddow says, talk me down. But I feel like any effort by a regular person to try to understand and make a difference right now at a state level, unless you already know all the players and have a score card, can’t be done. I barely understand it and I try to follow it pretty closely. The ground is constantly shifting and knowing where to put your foot takes skills most folks don’t have.
It’d be nice if a politician in this state had a “D” after his or her name for some other reason than that there was already a full field of “R”s. It’d be nice if all those Democrats worked together towards common Democratic goals. And it’d be nice if they shared resources and strategies.
But from the outside, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
So, what then?
I honestly don’t know. It is my belief, and I could be wrong–like I said yesterday, the more I learn, the less I realize I know–, that for many Tennessee Democrats, they are Democrats because they are. Not because they believe in any mutual goals or subscribe to a broad, similar philosophy, but just because. So, I’m not sure what being a Democrat in Tennessee means.
I’m not sure anyone does.
And, frankly, that problem runs much deeper than the Governor or Chip Forrester or whoever. Fighting about which one of them has fucked up worse is a distraction from that fundimental problem.
What does it mean to say that you’re a Democrat in Tennessee?
Tiny Cat Pants 
What does it mean to say that you’re a Democrat in Tennessee?
I don’t feel like I have a political home in the TNDP.
To me, it’s essentially meaningless if it means that you’re forced to support the likes of Charlotte Burks, Jimmy Naifeh, Doug Henry and Phil Bredesen.
I’m politically interested and motivated, and I suppose that I’m nominally a Democrat, but that’s by default. Not because the party has gone to any pains to address my concerns, or many of the concerns that I believe to be in the general interest of the people of the state. I mean, I do get that there is some amount of pandering involved in winning an election. But then there’s also giving away the store.
My family has given substantial support to the party – both in dollars and in-kind – since 2000, but that shit stopped last year. (Anyone wants to know what problem that I have with Forrester? Look no further than his role in the Kurita ouster. That alone should tell you what you need to know about the state of the state party. SSDD.)
So, I suppose that I am now a “left-leaning contrarian.” I’ll support Democrats insofar as they support policies I support, but not the state Democratic Party as it’s been behaving for the last decade. Not a plug nickel. I’m over being treated like a political ATM and being told that I need to suck it up and get over my objections (to the abuses of power, to outright corruption on the part of our electeds, to the undemocratic bullshit and GOB-erism, to the epic failures in policy, to throwing gays under the bus, to the erosion of women’s rights, to the wholesale giveaways to corporate interests, to the destruction of workers rights, etc etc etc), because there’s nowhere else to go.
But the choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican is no choice at all. It’s being fed “poop” and “shit” and being asked to give the poop a favorable rating because it’s got a cuter name.
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I don’t know. I’ve lived and voted in MO, NY, and NJ and understood what party identifications meant in all those places, but I don’t understand them in TN. There doesn’t seem to be a progressive wing of the party to work with.
I know this will sound like a crazy idea (maybe), but it seems to me that there are sufficient progressives for a coalition third-party that does fusion endorsements like the Working Families Party is in New York. No, you will not win much, except that you might be surprised in those places where Dems don’t even bother running anybody. On the other hand, neither will the Dems until they attract those disaffected voters back and to do that, they will have to both define themselves, put forward a coherent policy package, and move a couple of steps to the left on key issues.
While fusion voting is now illegal in your state (because one of the few things that TNDP and TNGOP agree on is that any meaningful electoral alternative has to be squashed), it wasn’t always and could be revived. There’s a recent trend to revisit this as a form of democratic electoral reform in places with a history of libertarian thinking and where the major parties have lost credibility as unresponsive or dysfunctional. To me, that seems to describe TN to a T.
I think being a Democrat in Tennessee means you came from outside of Tennessee and are liberal.
Bridgett, you make a good point. I am probably more jaundiced about fusion voting than I ought to be after spending all that time in NYC, where it’s abused so badly that the Liberal and Conservative Parties tend to endorse the same candidates, but, basically, yeah.
The WFP (sometimes affectionately known in my household as the WTF) is the only thing that has been able to loosen the hold of corrupt Dem machine politics in Albany. It’s made a huge positive difference in law enforcement and the DA/public defender system here. From my perspective, it does what it’s designed to do, which is to provide motivation (back to motivation!) for parties that otherwise would not face serious challenge to have to respond to minority voices within their parties.
KEW, I don’t think that’s true (see Andy’s comment above), but it did make me laugh out loud to read it.
To be fair, I’m not from around here – so the local Dems’ idea of what a Dem ought to be is a trifle foreign to me. Still, I know enough about party politics to know that there is alleged to be a substantive difference between partisans of different stripes.
Between the taxpayer-funded party bunker, Tennessee Waltz, primary rigging, overturning legitimate elections on behalf of politcal cronies, speeding-ticket fixing, public drunkenness, anti-dildo stunt legislation, and sinking when the rest of the country is rising? If you follow politics at all, in a double-blind test, you’d probably figure our guys for being Republicans if you didn’t know the players…
I mean, c’mon. With incompetence on this scale, you’d have to think that it requires a coordinated effort to remain so far behind.
I’m starting to get disheartened. I liked Clinton but I was young and had kids and a busy life. I got infuriated under Bush. Obama enthused me to the point I was ready to get involved. I started thinking, well maybe I could contribute locally to something, after all the kids are getting up there in age and I’ve got a little time on my hands now. So I started reading the state political news and blogs. Now when I am done reading I have to drink a beer and go look at pictures of puppies and kittens just to rebound sufficiently. I still have no idea how to get involved. I am a democrat because I think everyone should be treated the same and fairly. Everyone should have the same chance at an education and everyone should benefit the same from advances that society makes in science and medicine. I believe that society as a whole has a duty to protect individuals that cannot protect themselves, to house the homeless, feed the poor, provide for the disabled, elderly and mentally challenged. I believe that a woman has the right to choose what she does with her own body and usually the only thing I agree with republicans on is that we all have the right to bear arms (in our homes not the local bar.) I believe if we educate our children correctly we would need to house less prisoners. I believe if I lived in Mexico I would cross the river to make it to the US. I believe we live in the greatest country in the world and should lead the world by an example of peace and understanding. I believe with all my hear that we are one race, the human race. I believe they refer to me as a “pansy ass liberal” at the local pub.
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That’s more or less the way being a democrat was in my family. There was an assumption that all good people were democrats. So of course everyone had to be a democrat. I was the first to see the example of my family, the way they lived their lives and the way they raised me. So I found myself holding political views that followed the example of my family, not the D next to the people they voted for. It’s like they were done thinking about politics even though that’s the only thing that the family ever talked about.