A proposal to turn Tennessee blue.

[Kalyke]

After Tennessee took 20 steps backward yesterday while the rest of the country (save our closest Southern and mid-Western neighbors) made a giant leap for progressive mankind, the thrill of the Obama win was tempered by the fact that so many people in my beautiful state are so willfully ignorant.

Therefore, I have a three-step proposal to begin NOW in hopes of building a blue - or more blue - Tennessee; however, I'm not sure how to implement it and ask for your help.

1. Literally recruit Northerners and Californians of liberal stripes to move into the state. Seriously, we all know people who are in states where the weather is worse (the North) and the cost of living is atrocious (California). How would we go about recruiting some of these people to move into our state in hordes?

2. Compile a list of wealthy people who have an interest in entertainment/radio/media to purchase a news station in each of the major cities and program moderate to liberal talk radio. The Fairness Doctrine would not force station owners to actually put true liberals on all these hate-mongering right-wing shows (think Colmes). Memphis is blue, Nashville is blue. Heck, even the CITY of Knoxville is blue, despite having an ultra-red county of Knox. Who should these people be? How can we persuade them that media is, indeed, one of the biggest reasons why so many rural voters in the South are so, well, ignorant about the issues, including tax structures than absolutely annihilate any chance they may have for a better financial future.

3. Find some truly dynamic and charismatic people to run as Democrats. I swear, we simply don't have enough Democrats in this state who could at least CHARM some rural voters in to at least LISTENING to them. Bob Tuke is an intelligent and patriotic man, but he's, well, kind of boring. Ford Jr. is charismatic, but people won't vote for a conservative Democrat if they already have a Republican. Who are some of these people? How do we persuade them to both run AND to stand up to the smarmy Republicans they'd be running against?

Finally, if any of you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. You simply don't know how annoyed I am that my state looks like a collection of clueless clods after the most historic election... ever.

[southerncrone]

1. You may not have noticed in your area, but there are lots of people

from California moving to TN. They are (were) selling their houses for skads of $ & coming here buying up farms & upscale property. Now w/the mortgage crisis, that will probably slow, because they can't find buyers for their CA homes & the prices have fallen so much.

The last 20 yrs. has seen an influx of "foriners". Many of these are mid-level corp. managers & tend to be RED. They are part of the reason we have turned so RED.

But I think the main reason we are so RED now is because of the stronghold the Religious Right has on the churches & their alignment with the Repukes. Political dogma is being preached all across The South in the Community & Fundie churches. These churches should lose their tax-exempt status, but that probably won't happen. In the small communities in The South, church is a huge part of life. Infiltrating that arena was brilliant on the part of the Repukes. I don't know how you fight that except to continually point out the "non-Christian" behaviors of the Repukes (sex scandals, lying, warmongering, etc.)

Your second point has some potential. We do need to recruit individuals who will invest in radio & give our side a voice. One way that can be done is with small stations run from basements, garages, etc. Somewhat of a grassroots type of promotion.

And, yes, we do need to dig up some "personalities" to run for office. We seem to have extremes in this area. The likes of John Jay Hooker & Bill Boner are a tad too interesting, while others are.....boring.

Getting people involved on the local level & then promoting them up the ladder needs to begin ASAP. Seems not that many Dems are running for ANY kind of local offices any more. This will leave us with few candidates to choose from & will only make the matter worse in the future. In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, maybe you & I should run for something at the local level.....you know....."be the change you want to see" & all that jazz.

[Kalyke]

2. Wouldn't do me any good to run at the local level.

I live in Fountain City in Knoxville. I have a Democratic school board member, a Democratic city council member (although, these positions are allegedly non-partisan, we know they're Dems). I also have two Democratic county commissioners and a Democratic state House member. The Republican just won re-election to the state Senate, but she's only elected because my senatorial district includes some of the very-red county.

Therefore, your proposal that I run isn't necessary, but it could be done by other Tennesseeans in their communities.

Secondly, I had almost written a fourth point about liberals joining churches. I know there are a couple of churches liberals "flock" to, including the Unitarian and Methodist churches in my community. I think, perhaps, it's time for liberal Christians to branch out and start attending traditionally conservative churches and influencing other parishoners. I realize that would be an extremely TOUGH road to go down for many liberals, but I don't know how else to influence a religious organization other than from the inside out.

And, yes, I have noticed that we seem only to be attracting Orange County-type Californians. Surely some LA and SF types could find their way here. Couldn't they?

[Duppers]

6. Wow!

"I think, perhaps, it's time for liberal Christians to branch out and start attending traditionally conservative churches and influencing other parishioners."

Wow! That's more than ambitious. Do you know how insane these people are? (Please see my post below.)

Are you a native Tennessean?



Btw, Kalyke I lived in Fountain City, off Highland Drive, for ten years. :hi:

[Kalyke]

9. I live on Fair.

And, I am a native Tennessean. :) In fact, I'm a native Fountain Citian!! ;)

And, yes, I know how insane some of these churches are - and I didn't mean them. But there are some mega-churches where the diversity is such that there could be an avenue for change.

:hi: former neighbor!

[Sewaneetype2]

4. I, too, am totally bummed about Tennessee turning more red

The NY Times has a great map (http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html). Click on the voting shifts tab and you'll see a band of red in a whole country of people becoming more democratic. That small band starts in OK and goes across TN into eastern KY.

I think it's a combination of racism and Dominionism. Let's push to improve schools and look for local candidates who can capture the interest of their neighbors. I don't know what to do about the religious angle. My mom, a devout Obama-voting Christian reports that most of her neighbors consider it a moral imperative to vote Republican. I think many churches really are pushing the limits of legal political speech.

[Duppers]

7. Hi, Sewaneetype2, welcome to DU

I posted this in another thread but I thought you'd be interested in it since it supports what you're saying...

I found this just last night:

>>What's the Matter with Tn.?

Submitted by StaceyDiamond on Thu, 2008/11/06 - 5:10pm.

I've heard amazing gracious comments about Obama from W., McCain, Condi, Peggy Noonan etc. but all Duncan and Alexander are running around talking about is we "can't afford what he's promised" or we'll work with him if he doesn't "go down that left lane." We are talking about a guy big capitalist Warren Buffett has endorsed. Getting us out of a war sure would save money, that Duncan likes to promote when he wants to be mavericky.
I don't know what it is with Tn., we have more progressive pockets than some Southern states, we elected Clinton and Bredesen twice and almost Harold Ford Jr. but Kerry and Obama scored about the same here. I think maybe some of it is racial, but I think more of it might be a crazed fear of taxes, ie the tax revolt of 2002. And then there are the churches, WATE (tv) found some redneck-talking women in nursing scrubs having lunch yesterday and asked what they thought of the election, one articulate one said "we are church goers from the Bible Belt and we just don't believe anything he (Obama) says."

http://www.knoxviews.com/blog/193


:banghead:

[Kalyke]

10. I know Stacey!!!

She was torn between Clark and Dean in 2004. :)

[southernyankeebelle]

3. Am here already

Am 60 yrs old and white. My husband and I moved here about 18 yrs ago. We live in a rural area. We already are a minority because we are catholics. That is kind of hard when you have alot of Churches on every corner. We are in the bible belt. About 2 yrs ago they finally allowed to sell alocohol on Sundays. It has to be after the noon hour. Our super Wal Mart just now is starting to sell beer. This morning on the radio I heard that the Legislature finally got the majority of republicans and the first thing they are going to do is to pass a build to outlaw abortion that way when it finally is passed in Washington they will already have it on the books. These nitwits here don't realize that even the birth control pill is a form of abortion to these nuts. Some of the nuts don't realize what will happen if they outlaw total abortion. I know the catholic church wants to ablolish any forms of birth control. What fools they are. They are so uninformed. They are basically good people but are ignorant to what is going on. No we have a lot of work to do here in TN. I have my Obama sign on my car and wear it proudly. I know that my son and his friends that are in the 20 and 30 are our only hope. They are open to Obama and their future.

[Kalyke]

5. You know... if they do something like that, it might just

turn the state back the other direction.

I dare say that women who think they may end up barefoot and pregnant 90 percent of their young lives will put Republican signs in the yard, but vote Democratic in the privacy of the booth.

[doeriver]

8. proposal to turn (Northeast) Tennessee blue

Out of the box thinking for sure, but how practical is it to expect to entice liberals to relocate their legal residencies within Tennessee solely for the purpose of placing the Tennessee General Assembly and the U.S. congressional delegation from Tennessee in the blue camp...? Not very, I imagine...

Let me offer these ideas as a resident of Northeast Tennessee:

a) Democrats are definitely in a ballot minority in most East Tennessee rural areas and it still takes the minimum of the 50% + 1 of all votes to win any election within these Republican strongholds;

b) the TNDP needs to have a different campaign focus within the more conservative and Republican East Tennessee (and especially the Northeast), and more specifically Democratic candidates need to be "taking their lunches" away from Republican candidates on hot button political issues specific to these areas such as job creation, immigration, etc. even if there is a divergence with DNC/TNDP platform;

c) the TNDP and more financially able Democratic contributors need to give money to local Democratic county HQs in Northeast Tennessee (especially the Northeast Tennessee Democratic Resource Center in Johnson City that was not able to even purchase newspaper subscriptions and launch a newspaper clipping file for all the TN 1st Congressional District news publications;

d) recognize that Bristol, Tennessee (residence of the John M. Gregory family, formerly of KIng Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) is the likely epicenter of Republican fund raising in East Tennessee --- and I do not believe that it is any small coincidence that your ranking TNGA Senate (Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey) and TNGA House (Rep. Jason Mumpower) are both also from Sullivan County;

e) invest in social infrastructure in Northeast Tennessee --- probably to late for this now as the Bush Economy is shaking down the state government to help pay for the war in Iraq, but the TNGA should have been investing in such things as financing a television repeater facility on Holston Mountain so that more households in Northeast Tennessee would have greater opportunities to receive public television broadcasting via free over the air with television antenna reception as is the case with Fox News and other commercial broadcasting networks in East Tennessee, and;

f) the actual political talk audience for commercial radio broadcasting is rather small in Northeast Tennessee, unlike the demonstrated large public audience supporting WETS FM public radio --- concerned Democrats can go online to listen to WETS public radio and help support programming for show such as "Democracy Now" (and remember, no amount of support is really too small).

Just my thoughts...

[GaYellowDawg]

11. You had #3 in Congressional district 1.

Rob Russell is both interesting and dynamic. Problem is, he had next to no money, was running against a money machine, and the media didn't take his candidacy seriously because it's been 130 years since a Democrat won that district.

[Kelly Hayes-Raitt]

12. Californian Coming to Town!

Sorry to be slightly off-topic, but I'm having a terrible time posting.

I'm traveling through NASHVILLE between Jan 25 - Feb 1, 2009, to speak about my pre- and post-invasion trips to Iraq. I also spent this summer volunteering in Syria with Iraqi refugees.

I'm happy to address your political club, church, temple, neighborhood association, Rotary Club or school while I'm in Nashville, or in Knoxville on Jan 24 or Jan 25....I've given this presentation over 200 times, including to a group of Congresswomen in the US Capitol. This talk may not turn TN blue, but it will make you see red!

My bio is on my blog, http://www.PeacePATHFoundation.org.

(I'll do a clearer post once DU allows me to post a thread. Thanks for your patience!)