Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Politics / Woods 'A Howling Gale' Tossed Democrats Out of Power
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 3:17 PM
“In a lot of these places where we were dealing with these legislative races, the margin was 2 to 1 and worse. I think of someone like Becky Ruppe who I thought ran a great campaign and has a great story. She had counties in her district where McCain had 73 percent of the vote. That’s not a head wind that’s a howling gale blowing at you. Those kinds of things are very tough.”Asked whether he regrets advising Obama to stay out of Tennessee, Bredesen replied:
“I don’t think it would have made any difference to encourage him to come to Tennessee. He has an extraordinarily disciplined campaign, and I’m confident that he would do what the campaign thought was in the best interest of winning the presidency. … I don’t think I’d be doing him or the country any favor to somehow be stamping my foot and saying, ‘You gotta come here.’ “But no, I don’t regret that. I’m sorry the head wind turned out to be as strong as it was. … I don’t think a visit or two from Obama would have made a huge difference.”Bredesen was asked whether he personally could have done more to help Democrats:
“I certainly I feel that I did a lot. I’ll be honest, this year as you know … I did not close down the governor’s office and go out and campaign for a month because I had some enormous issues going on with the budget as well, and I do have a day job which I’m responsible for. But I certainly went out and did what the party asked me to do. Given what happened out there, I don’t think anything I could have done could have made much of a difference. It was just such a gale force wind, particularly in those rural counties which is really where most of the changes took place.”
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Bredesen: >
I want him to stop blowing smoke up our asses. Tennessee Democrats are running scared, and there's no freaking future for him or anyone else to get a statewide office unless they're willing to scrap.
"I don’t think I’d be doing him or the country any favor to somehow be stamping my foot and saying, ‘You gotta come here.’"
Give me a f---ing break, Governor. That wasn't what went on. You told him, "stay out." I'll tell you, it absolutely destroyed morale among the hundreds of folks who were volunteering at the Nashville Obama office phone banking for Democrats running for the STATE LEGISLATURE.
What a self-serving ass. Tell Eeyore Bredesen he sandbagged his own party by running down Obama every chance he got and telling him to stay out. I'd stay out too with a do-nothing sap like Bredesen weighing me down. As a Democrat, he makes Joe Lieberman and Rosalind Kurita look like Ted Kennedy.
this state needs populist democrats with the courage to be democrats. they should try doing a wikipedia search for the profiles of candidates who have won in pennsylvania, virginia, ohio, indiana and north carolina.
tennessee either needs better democrats or it has to get the courage to admit maybe theres no such thing.
also, when is someone from the scene going to point out the obvious... these rural voters had race on their minds. mccain essentially only won dixieland.
