I’m not liberal enough; I’m not feminist enough; I need to be more considerate to history.
Never mind the nonsense of taking Kleinheider’s tongue-in-cheek description of me and trying to hold me accountable to it. This is exactly what I meant by bullshit. Oh, we’re going to have a blog war about Cooper, let’s all rally our sides! We’re going to take on people who would logically be our allies because talking out our asses and acting like bigshots is so much more fun.
This is their great poll. Over 50% of folks in every demographic say that Jim Cooper opposing a public option would not have a real effect on their votes. And I’m the bad guy for saying what their poll says?
If this effort is primarily about providing our district with the best person to serve our interests and not primarily about some national bloggers trying to throw their weight around to see if they finally are the Washington movers and shakers they’ve always hoped they were, then where is the candidate? Why is all the early attention on the PAC and the names involved?
Because, right now, that’s the focus of the… what do you even call it? An “effort”?
And because I point that out I’m as bad as segregationists?
Please.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Even progressives aren’t immune to their like-minded spirit’s idiocy. Geez, next you’ll be carrying a gun to political rally.
Uncle Say, if I ever did that, I’d want to dress like Tex Cobb in Raising Arizona.
I went over to Talk Left and suggested that pissing on the local blogosphere is not necessarily the best way to gain friends. I think Ilissa hit it on the head, this has got to come from the ground up, and I want to talk to the Accountability Now people about this.
I DO want Cooper replaced with someone 2 more clicks to the left, but I can’t do much from here; Cohen has his own battle to fight and I need to help with that.
FWIW, I wouldn’t take Armando Llorens word as a real knock against your credibility. Consider the source. He’s not exactly the best person in the world to lecture anyone on progressive purity.
It’s one thing to field a challenger. It’s another to mount a credible challenge.
And right now, we have neither.
It’s hard to believe anyone would expect you to get on board for that.
I found the Talk Left post to be the paradigm of condescension and counter-productivity, and I’m someone who would normally be more sympathetic to their point. Geez. I don’t like it when people say bad things about my boss!
I wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek.
I thought you were being “head up ass,” but I was willing to go with the more charitable assessment.
the Talk Left post just drove home a bunch of the points people around here have been making about the disconnect between national and local action.
They are trying to paint all people as either for or against Cooper – and that to be for him is to agree with every position he holds and every vote he makes. They treat your follow-up as a walkback instead of a closer discussion of his positions and the heath care debate rather than the initial focus on concerns about outside interlopers.
Seems to me that they got called out as “outside interlopers” and have no response but to turn up the heat to distract from their guilt.
It’s not the challenge to Cooper that people have a problem with. It is the factually incorrect interpretation of what people here want (or just how many of them want it) and the decision to intervene (not just comment) here without contact with anyone local. It is treating Southerners like stupid children who don’t know what is good for them and refusing any evidence to the contrary. As soon as locals put up a fight, it is more evidence for their stereotypes. they are the ones who seems small-minded.
Feh. This whole thing is ridiculous. I don’t know anyone who is so enamored of Cooper that they are going to jump on board the bandwagon to support him. As I’ve said from day one, what I’ve found offensive to this whole campaign has been the negative tone and the sleazy tactics. I don’t Cooper deserves an attack that vicious. Cripes, he’s not Michelle Bachmann.
BUT that said .. I still don’t think a primary campaign will work. (Just realized I should have proofed my comment before submitting.) When I say “jump on the bandwagon to support him” what I meant is that while people may not be super fired up, he’ll still get most of the support.
Of course it’s all hypothetical until we know who the candidate is.
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This may sound weird, but I find this dust-up quite refreshing. Here in Illinois, all we seem to turn out onto the national political stage are pro-corporate centrists. And felons. And maybe I’m missing the hot debating and infighting here, but last I checked the place we reserve for Democrats who are ‘too progressive’ (and vocal about it) is called the Green Party.
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“Of course it’s all hypothetical until we know who the candidate is.”
Well, Jerry Maynard’s name is now floating around. He’s probably the best positioned Nashville politician who would run (i.e., isn’t a key figure in the party establishment and therefore would never challenge an incumbent).
And yet he’s getting attacked for potentially having the audacity to challenge Coop.
Face it: there isn’t ANY possible candidate who local media logrollers would tolerate. So any support would have to come from the local grassroots, with money coming in from national grassroots groups (to take on Cooper’s pile of cash coming from corporate PACs and rich Nashville worthies like the Ingrams).
The local establishment is furious, and scared. Witness the rage from SouthComm. Cooper’s ninnying passive aggressiveness is perfect for them, as he keeps the rich happy and activist Democrats cowed.
I don’t think that Woods is enraged that someone would challenge Cooper, but I don’t want to put words in his mouth. And I think that he would have thought that challenging Cooper, even if by Maynard, was foolish even two months ago when he didn’t work for SouthComm.
I think Maynard is an interesting choice for a candidate, but I think we also have to keep in mind that circumstances have forced the Cooper opposition’s hand, somewhat. They had to float the name of someone plausible, even if he’s not their preferred candidate.
So, I think we need to wait and see how that shakes out–if Maynard’s an actual option or just a sacrificial lamb.
I guess this is as good a place as any to leave this comment. Because a girl doesn’t expect to be away from the tubes and the news just for Yom Kippur and come back and find that she has no idea whatsoever what’s going on. But … what’s going on? Is Jerry Maynard going to run against Cooper? Because folks in my neighborhood (including me) would mostly find that
awesomeawesome.NM, I think it’s unclear about whether Maynard is actually running or if this is just a plausible name folks might get excited about being floated to give this whole thing some credibility.
But I do think he’s be an interesting candidate, for sure!
I do think that Cooper desperately needs a credible primary challenge. It has to be real enough at least to scare him into paying attention to his constituents. And to wake the state party up, too. And if it could be successful … I for one would not cry. Not one little tear.
nm, I think it would be a mistake for people to think that the state party is not awake. It’s just that their goals and strategies are, at any moment, directly opposed to what actual Democrats think of as Democratic goals and strategies.
Oh, B, I meant “wake up” in the sense of “awaken to the fact that there are some progressives in TN, and that they can’t expect us to keep on sitting back and accepting shit, and that they will either have to become a tad more progressive in the candidates and such they offer us or start visibly holding us down/back/silent, the latter of which may not look so good for their image.”
I just want to drop in here and point out Vibinc’s proposal that we run Cooper against Lamar or Corker. Peter Principle, yes, but he’s better than either one of them, it will open up that seat, and nobody has to get their feelings hurt.
nm, I think it would be a mistake for people to think that the state party is not awake. It’s just that their goals and strategies are, at any moment, directly opposed to what actual Democrats think of as Democratic goals and strategies.
Hear, hear.