Category: Politics Beat Blog

WAITING FOR … JERIAH JIP?

“You’re out of your mind. You’re absolutely out of your mind…”

So spake my good friend Gordo McAlister, late last Saturday night from the cell phone in his Lexus, somewhere in East Memphis. Myself, I was in a late-night bistro in Tampa, Florida, dining alone and nursing the wounds caused by yet another Tiger defeat — our sixth in a row, actually — this time a 31-28 coup de grace administered by the South Florida Bulls, a now 7-2 outfit with more than a few reasons — talent and excellent coaching, for starters — to be bullish about its football future.

The Tigers’ future, on the other hand, appears decidedly bearish, so bearish in fact that our own bear of choice must of necessity be “polar.” How appropriate, then, that the Blue Boys were clad all in white on this meteorologically splendid but existentially gloomy night.

“You know, you were freaking there, in freaking Tampa!” Not for the first time, Gordo was on a rant. He had once been a dyed-in-the-blue University of Memphis football fan. Now he played a lot of golf and tennis in the fall, and took great delight in tormenting me.

“At least I didn’t have to see the game. Whooh, boy, that must’ve been a real treat. It was bad enough on radio, let me tell you…” To this point, I had, literally, not gotten a word in edgewise.

“Gordo, I hope you’re sitting down.”

“I am. It’s hard to drive standing up. So what?”

“‘Cause I’ve gotta tell you something. The second half of that game tonight?

That was the greatest gut-check performance by a Tiger football team since November 9th, 1996.”

Gordo no longer went to Highland Hundred meetings, but he knew full well the significance of that date, the date of our historic (and only) orange-crushing of the University of Tennessee.

“What are you smoking down there, friend?” Gordo was not even slightly amused.

“I’m not smoking, Gordo. I’m eating.”

“Well, be careful: something’s eating your brain, man!”

I let the compliment slide. “Listen, the Tigers were down 28-7 at the half, with absolutely nothing to play for. Wrap it up, pack it in, mail it home, right?

“Yes, but…”

“No buts. We had nothing to play for. We were in an existentialist void. We were waiting for Godot, Gordo. Just waiting for Godot.” My friend was a graduate of a prominent Eastern university, so I knew my use of five-dollar words and my reference to Samuel Beckett’s melancholy classic would get his attention.

“Okay. I agree. They were lower than pond scum. So what’s your point?”

“My point is this: Somehow, some way, the coaches got them up for the second half. And the players — nearly every one of them on the field — delivered. Delivered in spades. With nothing whatsoever on the line, the guys went out and kicked butt. And kicked it almost as far as a victory.”

“Give me a break!” Gordo was not going gently into the night. “Almost, buddy, only counts in horseshoes and hand grendades, you know.”

“Maybe, but you should have seen the transformation. The defense played with real fervor. And Danny… well, it was like Jeriah Jip in action.”

“Jeriah Jip.” Gordo was silent for a moment. “Don’t think I know him. Is he a linebacker? Maybe a freshman?”

I knew I had Gordo where I wanted him. “And you tell me you’re an educated man?”

“Oh, I see. This is one of your silly quizes.” He was correct; I was prone to stunts like this, especially when cornered.

“Jeriah Jip, yes. Just like Danny Wimprine,” I repeated.

And then so did Gordo. “Jeriah Jip. Hmmmm….” It is not generally known around town that he had been the first-ever medieval philosophy/twentieth-century world drama joint major at his very prominent college, although just about everybody is aware that he was captain, his senior year, of the varsity football team. A true Renaissance Man, that Gordo.

“Think about it,” I said. “Wimprine came out swinging, like some kind of Wild West gunslinger. Everybody in Raymond James Stadium knew he was throwing, including the janitors. The whole USF defense keyed on him, every single play. He got the stuffing knocked out of him a couple of times, but took to the sidelines for a play or two, caught his breath, and came back out for more. All told he threw 52 passes and completed 32: both all-time U of M single-game records. And…”

“Stop! I’ve got it!”

Light, I could tell, had dawned on Marblehead, at least as far as Gordo was concerned.

“Jeriah Jip. Bertolt Brecht. “A Man’s A Man.” That weird pacifist play from the 1920s. Jeriah Jip, formerly Gayly Gay. Jeriah Jip. “The Human Fighting Machine.””

Not just everybody is aware that the Jeriah Jip was the hero of German dramatist Brecht’s 1926 tragicomedy about a meek dockworker who transformed himself into a macho war hero, but I knew Gordo might be. Nevertheless, even I was impressed at his near-total recall of this obscure classic.

“Well, he certainly took a licking and kept on ticking, that Jeriah Jip,” Gordo mused.

“Just like Danny, Gordo; just like Danny. He’s a human fighting machine, trust me. You should come out some time and see for yourself, see how close the resemblance is. Bertolt Brecht would get it, I feel certain.”

“I’m sure he would, although being German, I think he was probably into soccer. You remember, of course, that Jeriah Jip came to a bad end?”

“That’s only fiction, Gordo. Make-believe. This is real life, Gordo.”

“Sure, Ken, sure. That’s what they all say.”

I could tell Gordo was using irony, and using it well. After all, who understands irony better than a U of M football fan? Who better to blur the distinction between life and death? Between victory and defeat? Between a half-empty bottle and a half-full one?

“Tell you what. I have an extra ticket for the Army game. Come on out and see for yourself.”

Gordo was silent for a moment. “I’ll think about it. I really will.” And then he hung up, without even saying goodnight.

I could tell I hadn’t convinced him, but this was probably asa close to a yes or no as I would ever get from Gordo.

READER REACTION

Keep us on track, Mr. Neil, keep us on track. There are those of us who

publically admit to having “given up on the Tigers”, but in private still

truly lurk about the TV or radio, waiting for the WORD, waiting for SOMETHING

TO HAPPEN, and that something to be GOOD about Tiger football.

To paraphrase, Oh ye of little Tiger Football faith, give heed to Mr. Neil’s

words.

Bill Butler

It is still a time when, despite the occasional pro forma denials that come from either side of the equation, the names Ford and Herenton can add up to tension, rivalry, and one-upmanship. In some ways, the rivalry symbolized by these two prominent Memphis political names is exponentially larger these days, though the opportunities for head-on confrontation are now relatively few.

In the last week alone, the public prominence of the one, statewide, and of the other, on the national scene, have served as a reminder of how much (a) ambition and (b) ability are involved as the chief exemplars of the rivalry, Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and 9th District U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., continue to make moves that are both astonishing and unprecedented.

Note that “Jr.” suffix while you can, by the way, because, although the Ford clan patriarch, Harold Ford Sr., is still very much with it — keeping his hand in local, state, and national politics, even from his main base in Florida Ð his son and namesake has cut himself loose from the qualifier. By conscious choice of both Fords, the current congressman now presents himself to the world as just plain Harold Ford.

Except that there is nothing plain about the way the 32-year-old African-American prodigy has gone about establishing himself as a national byword. Though Ford has for years been regarded as a comer by the Washington media, regarded as a likely Senate candidate in the near future and as an aspirant for national office in the longer run, and though he shows up regularly on the network political talk shows as a spokesman for every issue under the sun, his latest move caught everybody flatfooted and prompted a New York Daily News columnist to refer to Ford, without any undue shading, as an “upstart.”

Certainly some such notion must have been in the mind, these last few days, of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the San Franscisco Democrat who had fairly easily forced her Texas colleague Martin Frost out of the running for the office of House minority leader vacated by Missouri’s Dick Gephardt after the Democrats’ debacle at the polls last week. When Ford declared himself a candidate for the job, contending that the liberal Pelosi represented an old, tired faction that had led the party for too long, Pelosi, elected deputy leader only this year, cracked, “Eight months must seems like a long time when you’re young.”

That Ford is not only running for the key post of minority leader (one electoral realignment away from being Speaker of the House) but doing so as a centrist adds to the uniqueness of his bid for national power. It also adds to the skepticism of those who, like Herenton, are not true believers.

Last week, only minutes after unveiling his own “surprise” by introducing victorious U.S. Senate candidate Lamar Alexander to a heady crowd of Republicans in Nashville, nominal Democrat Herenton faintly disparaged Rep. Ford’s claim to being “a moderate conservative” and contrasted his own “realism” with Ford’s ambition for more dramatic political perches.

“Let me give you this analogy. There are people who say, ÔHerenton, you’ve done a good job. You ought to be governor of Tennessee. It would not be realistic to think I could be governor of TennesseeÉ.You follow me? No one could pat me on the back enough to make me think I could be governor. I don’t understand why people get off into this kind of egomania and think they can do these kinds of things. Nobody’s going to pump me up and make me think I can do these kinds of things.”

The kind of thing Herenton himself is likely to do is to cross party lines so as to influence a statewide election, as he did in favoring Alexander over 5th District U.S. Rep. Bob Clement of Nashville, his Democratic partymate. Deploying his son Rodney Herenton and longtime aide Reginald French as openly avowed shock troops in the effort, Herenton made conspicuous appearances with Alexander during the campaign but withheld an explicit acknowledgement of his support until last Tuesday night when he made his well-leaked introduction of the winner and was candid afterward about why.

A Clement win “just wasn’t going to happen,” Herenton said, and, aside from that, he and Alexander had maintained a relationship of “mutual admiration” for more than a generation, since newly appointed Memphis schools superintendent Herenton first encountered the newly elected governor in 1978. “With all due respect to Bob Clement, for all my friendship for Lamar, I just felt that Lamar was a far superior candidate.” Anyhow, said Herenton, “I don’t run a partisan raceÉI’m not deeply involved in a party.”

Acknowledging that his own ability to build bridges to the nominal political opposition had some resemblances to Ford’s centrist behavior as a political figure, Herenton said, “I’m just probably a little more forthright, in terms of — if I’m really for a person, what you see is what I really am.” [HEAR THE WHOLE QUOTE BY CLICKING HERE.]

What he and Harold Ford Jr. both are is politicians of growing stature and scope.

From time to time they can and will make common cause (they were both on the line for victorious Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen, on whose victory platform Herenton stood only minutes after leaving Alexander’s).

But it is clear that neither is especially pleased when the other makes political waves. Head-on Ford-Herenton clashes have been unlikely since the 1999 city mayor’s race, when the incumbent Herenton easily put away a field including the congtressman’s Uncle Joe Ford, then a city councilman and now a county commissioner.

But there is, and will likely always be, a competitive edge to their dealings with each other.

Needing a magic number of 105 to be elected minority leader of House Democrats, U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. now has 61 votes sewn up, “with a lot of momentum” to get the rest, says Memphis Democrat David Cocke, one of several Ford allies in Washington to lend the 9th District congressman a hand.

Ford’s underdog struggle may have gained a boost when another Democratic member, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur, entered the competition Wednesday — potentially splitting the vote of favorite Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Cocke said Ford, who announced his bid for the key leadership post last Friday, has “momentum” and “all the dynamics in his favor.” A key convert, according to Cocke, has been Michigan Democrat John Conyers, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who was originally committed to Pelosi.

“He [Ford} has the conservatives of the ‘Blue Dog’ caucus solidly with him, and he wowed his fellow members of the Black Caucus in a speech to them last night. He’s moving them rapidly toward his cause,” Cocke said.

One of those spearheading the Memphis congressman’s effort in Washington has been his father, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., who, as Cocke noted, “knows all the players.”

Untitled Document
First, listen to what Mayor Willie Herenton had to say in public last Tuesday night about the election to the U.S. Senate of Lamar Alexander. To listen, CLICK HERE. Then, watch this space for what the mayor said in PRIVATE about Alexander, Bob Clement, and Harold Ford Jr.. (Yes, you’ll get to hear that, too!) And read a full account in “Politics” in this week’s Flyer.

auto;margin-left:.5in’>

—– New York Daily News‘ Bazinet

reports, The “upstart” Harold Ford Jr. (D-9^th , TN)

“refused to abandon his uphill bid” for Min. Leader, accusing the

“seasoned” Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of the “tired, failed

politics” that “drove the party down.” Ford: “If you

believe that the same old, tired, failed politics of the Democratic caucus is a

direction we ought to travel, then clearly Nancy’s your choice.” Ford said

“he believes he can woo some” Pelosi backers “with his centrist

policies.” Ford is “also is hoping to pick up support” from

Frost backers (11/11). Ford has “offered himself up as a new generation of

leadership with a more moderate outlook than Pelosi.” However,

“observers said he had no chance of winning” (Copley, 11/9).

auto;margin-left:.5in’>

—– Meanwhile, Ford on 11/10 “insisted”:

“The race is not over.” Ford “has not released a list” of

supporters– “and may not, but he is claiming the support of all

four” TN Dems, “plus pockets of support elsewhere,” including

Reps. Brad Carson (D-OK 02), Lacy Clay (D-MO 01), Dennis Moore

(D-KS 03), and Adam Smith (D-WA 09). Rep. John Tanner (D-TN 08):

“Harold brings not only a new generation of leadership, but a message that

resonates and will resonate with people in their everyday lives.”

Meanwhile, Clay disputed comments by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI 14) that

the Dem caucus “will not support Ford because he voted for the resolution

to authorize force with Iraq” (Brosnan, Memphis Commercial

Appeal, 11/11).

auto;margin-left:.5in’>

—– CNN’s Snow: “I had a lot of

Democrats say some not so kind things to me this week about Harold Ford, Jr.,

that he just wants to — you know, he’s a media monger, he just wants to get

his face out there. He made his announcement on Don Imus’s show, for Pete’s

sake” (“Saturday Edition,” 11/9).

auto;margin-left:.5in’>—– More Davis: “Let me

just say that Congressman Ford believes that many of the people who are

publicly committed to my old friend Nancy Pelosi now are reevaluating that they

have an alternative. It doesn’t mean that they’ve changed their minds, but they

shouldn’t necessarily be counted as inevitable” (“Late Edition,”

CNN, 11/10).

DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS: Have You Driven A Ford Lately?

A party in search of new leadership suddenly got a fresh face to consider when Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) Friday a.m. announced his bid for House Minority leader. It’s perhaps too early to tell what impact his announcement will have on the prospects of fellow candidates, but his rationale for running was certainly clear.

Making his announcement on “Imus,” Ford said “a new era of leadership and vision and energy on our side of the aisle is desperately needed,” and argued his opponents “would represent the same old, same old, the ways of the past.” Ford pledged to work with Pres. Bush “when his interest and, frankly, his position will benefit the nation.” He readily claimed the underdog mantle and sought to blunt the perception that he is too young by noting, “experience hasn’t produced much on my side of the Congress.”

If he were to win the race for Minority Leader, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) would be the highest ranking elected African American in history.

Ford officially announced Friday a.m. on “Imus.” From the announcement:

Ford: “I have done some thinking over the last day or so and after having talked with several of my colleagues as well as other Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in my district and around the country, and have decided that I’m going to offer my candidacy for the House Democratic leader position — all in an effort to bring about a change that I think many of us in the Congress, particularly Democrats, are seeking and searching for. A new era of leadership and vision and energy on our side of aisle is desperately needed.

“As much as I respect and have worked closely with both [Reps.] Nancy [Pelosi, D., CA] and Martin [Frost,D., TX] over the past six years — my six years in Congress — it has become abundantly clear that their leadership, in many ways, would represent the same old, same old, the ways of the past in many ways. And if we’re serious about change within our caucus, which I sense many of my colleagues are. … I think unfortunately and undeservedly that our party has become associated with the notions of grid lock and obstructionalism. I think President Bush has done a good job of painting us that way. However, I think nothing could be further from the truth. I think our role as Democrats here in the next two years, especially the next two years as an opposition party, will require a lot more than just a lot of yelling and screaming and, frankly, unconstructive criticism. If we’re serious about being an opposition party and serious about doing what’s in the best interest of the nation — which I think requires working with the president when his interest and, frankly, his position will benefit the nation.”

Ford continues: “Democrats showed some success on Tuesday night. We won some key governor’s races. … My governor won in spite of numerous visits by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others, and he did it because he focused on answers and solutions. And Democrats and Republicans and Independents all rallied around his campaign. And, frankly, that’s been missing in the Congress. As much as I respect Dick — I wish him the very best. He was the hardest working, the biggest money raiser, and, frankly the most passionate of Democrats — but he was just unable to put a team together to take the majority. I believe the leadership that I would offer as leader would not only allow us to substantively challenge the president and support thing in the best interest in the nation but also … navigate the amazing diversity within our caucus — not racial diversity as much ideological, gender, and geographical diversity that I believe makes our party so rich, different, unique, and quite frankly, able to lead this nation.

“I realize I start off as an underdog. Nancy and Martin have been campaigning for this for a little over a year now. Nancy … is the minority whip in the Congress and Martin is the chair of the caucus. But I think my colleagues in the Democratic side are interested in real change. If they are, I submit that my candidacy and leadership would offer that change, would offer that introduction of new ideas and certainly would offer an introduction of new faces. Not only would it be me, it would a whole new generation of leadership in Congress. Based on conversations I’ve had with colleagues in the past 24 hours, there is vast interest in something like this.”

More Ford: “Some would point to my lack of experience in Congress. I appreciate and respect that. … But experience hasn’t produced much on my side of the Congress up to the time that I’ve been in Congress. We have not landed in the majority. And, frankly, it may be time for a clean break from the ways of the past” (“Imus In The Morning,” MSNBC, 11/8).

On The Trail

Ford allies tout that Ford served as the chair of the TN Coordinated Campaign, where Dems picked up the TN 04 race and the TN GOV race. ’02 candidates Ford campaigned for, outside of TN: atty Jack Conway (D) KY 03; Rep. Dennis Moore (D) in KS 03; Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-MO). Ford also agreed to stump for Rep. Tim Holden (D-PA 06) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ 12) (Hotline sources, 11/8).

SUPERFICIALLY TENNESSEE, which elected a Democratic governor, seemed to be mildly out of sync with the national trend. But only superficially. President George W. Bush had orchestrated a brilliant GOP campaign — part shell game, part Halloween masque, focusing on the now-you-see-him/now-you-don’t bogeyman Saddam Hussein — that seemed to crush the spirits of Democrats and discredit their national leadership.

But there were telltale signs of Democratic weakness in Tennesee, too. There were significant party losses in the state House and Senate. And there was Willie Herenton, the African-American mayor of Memphis.

Herenton has been a social symbol many times in his lifetime. A Golden Gloves boxing champion in his impoverished youth who got to be superintendent of his once rigidly-segregated city’s school system and then, wonder of wonders, the first black mayor in Memphis history, he has now become a symbol of the current political moment: As much as anybody or anything else, he represents the diminished power of the Democratic Party to command the loyalty of its longtime base.

Herenton has worn the mantle of Democratic Leader when its suits him ; during the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, he was featured before, during, and after the Democratic convention in Los Angeles as a prime mover for Gore-Lieberman.

And he was an early champion of Phil Bredesen for the Democratic nomination for governor. Eight years earlier, however, it had been otherwise. Herenton had kept a careful silence during the 1994 gubernatorial race between Democrat Bredesen and the Republican nominee, 7th District congressman Don Sundquist. When Sundquist won, Herenton began letting it be known that he had “supported” his fellow Memphian; this mushroomed into an “endorsement” in subsequent years.

The mayor’s routine this time around was less dog and more pony. Though he never used the word “endorse,” he made no effort to be circumspect about his involvement in the Alexander campaign, showing up as the guest of honor at a major Alexander campaign function and talking about “coalition” with the former governor.

His son Rodney Herenton, meanwhile, was directly involved in the campaign, as was longtime Herenton aide Reginald French. Both were at Alexander’s victory celebration in Nashville Tuesday night when the Memphis mayor and increasingly nominal Democrat unveiled a “surprise” that shouldn’t have been any surprise at all, introducing the Senator-elect to the crowd and telling all and sundry later on that he hadn’t though much of Bob Clement as a Senatorial candidate but that, even if he had, he regarded himself as a “non-partisan” official who didn’t have to represent the interests of any particular party.

Considering that his communications aide and close adviser, Gale Jones Carson, doubles as chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, this was an interesting admission.

As it happens, the Memphis mayor’s chief local rivals for power — the Ford family, which boasts a present and former congressman, a state senator, and representatives on every legislative body in Memphis and Shelby County — didn’t invest much belief in Bob Clement, either. U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the media darling and dynamo who had badly wanted to run for Fred Thompson‘s vacated Senate seat himself, made a couple of pro forma appearances on the Nashville congressman’s behalf, but the family saved its major effort for gubernatorial candidate Bredesen.

THAT’S ANOTHER STORY, itself an object lesson: The ex-Nashville mayor had saved for the last week of his campaign a ploy that was implicit in his strategy all along — the announcement of a “Republicans for Bredesen” committee, composed of the kind of solid corporate and entrepreneurial citizens who had been rumored to be for Bredesen (on account of his much-vaunted “managerial” ability) all along. (One of the celebrants at Bredesen’s Hilton post-election bash was Dave Goetz, longtime chief lobbyist for the state’s business community.)

In fact, Bredesen had such obvious built-in appeal to the business wing of the Republican Party that his Republican opponent, 4th District congressman Van Hilleary, had taken to calling the former healthcare entrepeneur “an HMO millionaire” and posing as a populist defender of the common man against him. Another tack taken by Hilleary — that Bredesen’s professed disblief in a state income tax was insincere — may, in fact, have been in error.

Many Democrats assumed Bredesen had been shamming as well — some were irate, some were understanding — but they, too, may have missed the point. In 1999, when he was still serving as mayor, Bredesen had publicly taken issue with the direction of exÑrival Sundquist’s tax-reform effort, and there was nothing in the record, save a throwaway remark in a fledgling race made by Bredesen long ago in New York State, to suggest otherwise.

In any event, Bredesen’s impressive early figures from the GOP bailiwick of East Tenessee on election night should have signaled a rout of Hilleary. That they didn’t, even when coupled with a good Democratic turnout from Memphis, where both Herenton and the Fords were pulling their oar, was revealing of another fact: Bredesen had done relatively poorly in the Democratic heartland of Middle Tennessee, and that was the factor which made the gubernatorial race such a squeaker.

Erstwhile primary opponent Andy Womack of Murfreesboro, who, along with Bredesen’s other Democratic rival, Charles Smith, had done some evangelizing on Bredesen’s behalf, complaned on election night, “They didn’t do anything in Middle Tennessee. It’s like they skipped over us and spent all their attention on West and East Tennessee. And that’s what made it so close!”

Bredesen’s own immediate postmortem on his narrow victory inadvertently confirmed that diagnosis : “Oh, there were times it got a little sticky. But generally, even when it looked uncomfortably close, it corresponded to what we had expected from this or that area.”

Either, as indicated, Bredesen took the Democrats of Middle Tennessee for granted, or there weren’t as many of them in those parts as has generally been supposed.

Even in Shelby County, Bredesen’s margin could have been larger than it was but for some residual resentment among Democratic legislators there stemming from his anti-income-tax statements during tense moments of last spring’s legislation session, as well as a feeling of alienation from figures like Stuart Brunson, Bredesen’s campaign director and a holdover from the state’s presidential campaign in 2000, and Bob Corney, chairman of the state Democratic Coordinating Committee.

“That Stuart Brunson!” fulminated state Rep. Kathryn Bowers, as she made ready to head back home to Memphis on Wednesday. “He was about as no-good and hurtful to the Bredesen campaign as he was to Gore-Lieberman in 2000. He and the rest of that bunch didn’t listen to anybody, and they walled themselves off from real voters and real party people. They wouldn’t pay attention, and they almost blew it the same way they blew the presidential race !”

TO BE SURE, the newly elected congressman from Hilleary’s vacated 4th District is a Democrat, Lincoln Davis, and Davis’ hard-fought and well-financed win over Republican Janice Bowling — which gave the Democrats a 5 to 4 edge in the state’s House delegation — would seem to run counter to the national trend favoring George W. Bush and the GOP.

Except that it was a tossup as to who ran more as a conservative, Davis or Bowling; so much was this the case — especially on social themes like abortion and gun control — that the pundit Robert Novak, archdeacon of the Republican right, proclaimed late in the campaign that Davis would be the most conservative Democratic congressman elected since the New Deal!

That this is something of an overstatement (after all, Davis was backed in the Democratic primary by no less than Al Gore!) does not belie its central truth: that, even in victory, Tennessee Democrats are shading, out of need or inclination, to their party’s right. Even Harold Ford Jr., regarded by many as the state Democrats’ (and maybe the national Democrats’) best hope for the future, has chosen to locate his political identity among the Blue Dog conservatives of the Democratic Leadership Council.

In the present presumed climate of opinion, that may be the Good News for Democrats, not the Bad News. Although in Tennessee, as elsewhere, Democrats have in rrecent years suffered constant attrition as isolated cadres and candidates have drifted over to the Republican side, most of those who remain, even the most rightward-leaning, maintain stout party loyalties.

Take another Blue Dog luminary, 8th District congressman John Tanner of Union City, who nursed a libation in his hotel room at the Hilton Tuesday night and professed outrage at Bush and the GOP as the bad news from national contests streamed across the bottom of his TV screen.

“Those people ought to be arrested and tried for fraudulence!” Tanner said. “They took our minds off what was important, the economy, and sold us a bill of goods about Iraq. The idea, trying to convince us that a two-bit tin-horn dictator with 20 million starving people was a threat like Adolf Hitler! They don’t have any weapons to bother us with! The whole thing was an election fraud. Nothing but!”

There were two bottom lines to this exclamation by Tanner (than whom there are few more conservative Democrats in the whole of the House of Representatives): (1) that — at some level of reality, anyhow — party loyalty is still live and well; (2) that, in the long run, economic factors of the sort that Tanner regarded as having been obfuscated by an artificial war fever are still bedrocks of the Democrats’ constituency.

The fact remains that — regardless of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or any other external menaces yet to be found — the nation’s economy is in the toilet, with rising unemployment, lowered productivity, and deficits once again mounting. The excesses of corporate greed may have been shoved under the rug during the late stages of the recent election campaign, but they will be remembered again as the economic crunch continues on the middle and working classes.

The Vietnam era served to radicalize the conscience of the middle class in some key respects, mainly social; another transformation is possible — even likely — under the prolonged stress of financial worry and resultant social dislocation. Given such circumstances — and the prospect that Republicans will pursue their ongoing tax-break agenda while cold-shouldering minimum-wage concerns — a lot of Democratic households now voting Republican could find themselves hearkening back to a bygone political era and reviving yellow-dog Democratic sympathies that are ancestral, if at the moment moribund..

NO MORE FORTHRIGHT APOSTLE of laissez-faire Republicanism now exists than the newly elected 7th District congressman, Marsha Blackburn. But even Blackburn in the course of working her mainly suburban and rural West Tennessee district was careful to moderate her language — and her perspective — this fall on such issues as privatizing Social Security.

There’s a potential backlash out there to such notions as the one expressed by Senator-elect Lamar Alexander in the very concluding sentiments of his address to campaign supporters and celebrants Tuesday night. He would do what he could, he said, to minimize the growth of federal power in Washington.

That sort of rhetoric works fine and dandy in a boom period like the one which is now receding in our collective rear view mirror. It may not work as well in straitened times, even for so distinguished and personable a figure as Alexander.

There is some evidence, indeed, that even the state income tax (which both proponents and opponents recognized to be redistributionist, to some degree) was never as unpopular among Tennesseans as the organized public protests indicated. Joe Hall of the Ingram Group mused on election night as he surveyed the results of legislative races: “One surprising thing about the election was that the income tax per se seemed to have little to do with the outcome, even in races where a Democrat was unseated.”

House Speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry was inclined Tuesday night to look for silver linings — like the victory of an African-American Democrat, Nathan Vaughn, in state House District 2, formerly represented by the late Keith Westmoreland., a Republican. “One brand-new member of the caucus!” DeBerry, a stalwart of the legislative African-American Caucus, enthused.

And she even had an optimistic outlook for the great outcast of this election year, Governor Don Sundquist, the Don Quixote of an utterly squashed tax reform initiative and the unwanted lame duck who was made a fall guy in both Hilleary’s and Breedesen’s TV commercials. (When Bowers suggested at one point in her reelection race that Sundquist campaign for her in Memphis, the governor sheepishly replied, “Kathryn, I’m not sure you really want me to!”)

Said Democrat DeBerry of the GOP’s apostate prince: “When you try so hard to do the right thing, your recognition will come. It may not come tomorrow, but it will come! In history, for our posterity, Don Sundquist will be a hero. I want him to know that.”

And maybe then pigs will fly and the South will rise again and Tennessee Democrats — who were, after all, able to elect a governor this year, even if only barely — will be able to hold up their head once more.

Bill Gibbons, the district attorney general in these parts and a man prominent in this year’s Republican political races, especially that of Lamar Alexander‘s for the U.S. Senate, had a secret to confide Monday night, as Alexander, accompanied by outgoing Senator Fred Thompson, staged his last rally before the local GOP faithful at the new Holiday Inn on Central Avenue.

The secret was this: Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, a nominal Democrat who was supporting his party’s candidate for governor, former Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, but had been lending serious indirect support to Alexander in his campaign against Democratic Senate candidate Bob Clement, would be playing a major role on Alexander’s behalf Monday night.

Our city’s mayor had agreed, said Gibbons, to introduce Alexander at his expected victory celebration in Nashville.

Not only might Herenton’s emergence as an open and declared ally of the Republican conceivably transform partisan politics in Tennessee, it also was one more factor illustrating the unusual prominence of Memphis and Shelby County in shaping this year’s election results.

In fact, the political year 2002 saw all the major statewide campaigns converge on Memphis as Election Day drew near, a reminder to those with long memories of days of yore, when the city and its environs loomed disproportionately large on the state scene.

That was the time, during the long rule of Edward Hull Crump over the political affairs of Memphis and Shelby County from the late 1920s through the mid-1950s, that statewide elections might be conducted across the breadth and length of Tennessee but they were decided right here, on the banks of the Mississippi.

“Boss Crump” and “Big Shelby” were virtually synonymous terms indicating the extent of the domination of the rest of Tennessee by its southwest corner. With rare exceptions, governors and senators were designated by Memphis’ long-term political machine. As one example, Gordon Browning, a native of the West Tennessee town of Huntington, had been an intimate of Crump’s and was first elected governor, with the Great Man’s say-so, in the late 1930s.

Browning had an independent streak, however, and he kept bristling at the idea of being considered Boss Crump’s puppet, so he kept falling in and out of favor with Crump, and the last time he won election, in 1948, it was in direct opposition to Crump’s handpicked man, Jim McCord. That was a time of postwar reform sentiment, late in the reign of Boss Crump, however, and Browning was able to win an upset. (A Tennessee presidential contender — first of a long series to come — was voted in the same year. In a three-cornered race, Estes Kefauver defeated Crump’s man for the Senate, John A. Mitchell.)

That seemed to be that, except that Boss Crump, not quite in his dotage, was determined not to be bested and had discovered an ambitious young war veteran in Dickson named Frank Clement. More or less as his last piece of power-brokering in this life, Crump boosted Clement against the man he considered a renegade and he won handily. Crump was able to see Clement reelected in 1954, the year he died.

And, though there were various freelance efforts by various of his former associates to retool the machine and maintain its dominance, Crump had named his last state leader, and, so, it would seem, had any force emanating from Memphis and Shelby County.

A Shelby Countian, Dr. Winfield Dunn, a Republican, was elected governor in 1970, over Democrat John Jay Hooker of Nashville, but that victory arose not so much out of a local power base as it did from the tide of Southern Republicanism, which had begun in the aftermath of the civil rights revolution, finally washing into Tennessee. (All previous statewide elections, at least in the 20th century, had been decided in the Democratic primaries.) And the then young and dynamic Hooker happened also to have suffered some embarrassing business losses which tarnished his reputation and made voters look to an unknown.

And even Dunn decided to tarry in Nashville, the state capital, after leaving office in 1975. He is virtually an unknown figure in Memphis today, though the UT college of medicine here is named for him, and that fact symbolizes Memphis’ exclusion from the political center as much as anything else in the post-Crump era.

When Nashville congressman Bob Clement, this year’s Democratic nominee, was struggling this fall to rise in the polls against former Governor Alexander, he lamented, “If only we had the same kind of name recognition … .” For a scion of the family which had once dominated state politics after that initial boost from Boss Crump, it was an ironic confession and a sign of different times.

But the return of Clement, a frequent visitor, to Memphis this past weekend was another sign — one perhaps indicating the Bluff City is, once again, where statewide leaders are confirmed.

“Shelby County is where it’s at,” said Clement Sunday night by way of explaining his presence here for much of the last weekend and for the last whole day before Tuesday’s statewide election which would, of course, decide his personal and political fate.

Clement, the Democratic congressman from Nashville’s 5th District, was well aware that the smart money and the pollsters had made Republican opponent Lamar Alexander a prohibitive favorite to win the Senate seat being vacated by the GOP’s Fred Thompson, and he had to have noticed that none of the network political talk shows had his race on their boards for discussion on Sunday.

But he soldiered on, showing up for a packed party in his honor at the Midtown home of activist David Upton, and his good nature and dogged determination shone through. Acknowledging the presence of his party’s 7th District nominee, Tim Barron, Clement told the crowd, “He’ll be around awhile,” and the crowd’s brisk applause for the prospect of Barron’s enduring as a political presence past the likely worst-case scenario barely concealed a pang for veteran Clement, who was not likely to be so fortunate in the case of defeat.

“We’re going to win!” said one of his volunteer aides, Debbie Johnson, when asked to estimate the outcome, and her eyes shone with conviction. Clement himself would nod sagely later on when reminded that the ultimate science might not reside with the pollsters, who have shown Clement anywhere from 6 to 12 points behind Alexander in the last week, but with the spirit of Werner Heisenberg, whose Uncertainty Principle established the preeminence of the observer, mayhap even the participant, in wrenching fate out of its seemingly predetermined paths.

And Shelby County, with its mass of black (i.e., Democratic) voters and, for that matter, with its teeming suburban white (i.e., Republican) blocs, had become a special target for the major candidates in both parties in this last week of campaigning. The bottom line was this: Democratic candidates were dependent on Memphis’ large inner-city black vote; Republican office-seekers needed to whet up the equally huge suburban white vote. Either bloc could be crucial to a candidate’s hopes for success.

They had all been here over and over of late. Van Hilleary, the GOP candidate for governor, made a brief stopover Saturday night at the Republicans’ East Memphis “Victory 2000” headquarters with Sen. Bill Frist, and he asserted, “This is my fifth trip here in the last week, and I’m coming back Monday.” (Actually, he came only as near as Covington, where he did his best to rouse the distant suburban expatriates who in recent years have made south Tipton County a Republican bailiwick and whom the state House Speaker made sure to cut loose from his district during the most recent reapportionment.)

GOP Senate candidate Alexander had been much in evidence the previous weekend, doing a two- or three-day stopover and making much the same point as would Clement — that Shelby County has the votes that would make the difference in this election. He was back again Monday night for a last rally at the Holiday Inn on Central Avenue, appearing with outgoing Senator Fred Thompson and making sure his listeners among the local Republican faithful were aware that he had chosen Memphis as his final venue on purpose.

As Clement — who made his last visit here Monday at an airport rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen, prepared by Memphis’ other major Democratic force, the Ford family — had done earlier, Alexander noted that Memphis had perhaps not received enough stroking from government and promised to help remedy that.

And so, of course, did Bredesen, who has been back and forth to the Bluff City enough times — always praising its “vibrance,” even at the expense of Nashville, the city he led in recent years — to claim honorary citizenship.

The same could be said, even more firmly, for Marsha Blackburn, the GOP’s 7th District nominee and so confident of a victory over Democrat Tim Barron that she spent much of her time campaigning for local Republican nominees for other offices. Blackburn had, in fact, taken a residence on Highway 64 in Cordova for the duration.

And then there was the one exponent of a major statewide campaign who lived here. That was Steve Cohen, Memphis’ Midtown state senator, who, though not a candidate himself this year, was virtually synonymous with the cause of the lottery referendum. He, too, was heard from locally in these last day.

Flanked by Shelby County Democratic chairman Gale Jones Carson, who added her straightforward endorsement of the lottery referendum on Tuesday’s ballot, Cohen, father of that initiative and its nurturer for 16 long years, warned Monday at a press conference at his Midtown residence that lottery opponents were up to skullduggery as the vote neared.

As a flashing sign in his front window behind him kept cycling from “EDUCATION LOTTERY” to “VOTE” and back again, Cohen charged that Gambling Free Tennessee, the group responsible for a well-funded campaign against the lottery this year, had been operating under the radar of the state’s election code through a shadow corporation known as GFT, Inc., which, he said, was obligated to file financial disclosures and had not done so.

The organization, he said, could be a means of cloaking “illegal contributions or some they don’t want to divulge.” Casino interests he named as the most likely possibilities in the latter category, and he brandished a publication put out by Baptist opponents of the lottery which acknowledged that “gambling proponents” were also in opposition to it.

Whether tongue-in-cheek or not, Cohen said, “It was through divine intervention that we learned of this today [Monday] and not tomorrow.”

On Tuesday, as rains threatened to hold down voter turnout, Cohen was still on the case, going from polling place to polling place and reporting, to his consternation, that Sycamore View Church of Christ had a flashing sign too, reading “VOTE NO ON LOTTERY” across the church’s marquee. “It’s digital. It works off a computer,” a church secretary noted proudly, and in that sense the opposition had something of a lead on Cohen, whose own flashing sign at home had a homespun look.

All the same, Cohen’s neon sign was a throwback to a former time, one in which Memphis personalities, Memphis interests, and Memphis constituencies loomed large in state affairs, and a time, in fact, which may have returned.

LOCAL COLORS

MEMPHIS — Bill Gibbons, the District Attorney General in these parts and a man prominent in this year’s Republican political races, especially that of Lamar Alexander’s for the U.S. Senate, had a secret to confide Monday night, as Alexander, accompanied by outgoing Senator Fred Thompson, staged his last rally before the local GOP faithful at the new Holiday Inn on Central Avenue.

The secret was this: Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, a nominal Democrat who was supporting his party’s candidate for governor, former Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, but had been lending serious indirect support to Alexander in his campaign against Democratic Senate candidate Bob Clement, would be playing a major role on Alexander’s behalf Monday night.

Our city’s African-American mayor had agreed, said Gibbons, to introduce Alexander at his expected victory celebration in Nashville.

Not only might Herenton’s emergence as an open and declared ally of the Republican conceivably transform partisan politics in Tennessee, it also was one more factor illustrating the unusual prominence of Memphis and Shelby County in shaping this year’s election results.

In fact, the political year 2002 saw all the major statewide campaigns converge on Memphis as election day drew near, a reminder to those with long memories of days of yore, when the city and its environs loomed disproportionately large on the state scene.

That was the time, during the long rule of Edward Hull Crump over the political affairs of Memphis and Shelby County from the late –20s through the mid-Ô50s, that statewide elections might be conducted across the breadth and length of Tennessee but they were decided right here, on the banks of the Mississippi.

“Boss Crump” and “Big Shelby” were virtually synonymous terms indicating the extent of the domination of the rest of Tennessee by its southwest corner. With rare exceptions, governors and senators were designated by Memphis’ long-term political machine. As one example, Gordon Browning, a native of the West Tennessee town of Huntington, had been an intimate of Crump’s and was first elected governor, with the Great Man’s say-so, in the late ‘30s.

Browning had an independent streak, however, and he kept bristling at the idea of being considered Boss Crump’s puppet; so he kept falling in and out of favor with Crump, and the last time he won election, in 1948, it was in direct opposition to Crump’s handpicked man, Jim McCord. That was a time of post-war reform sentiment, late in the reign of Boss Crump, however, and Browning was able to win an upset. (A Tennessee presidential contender — first of a long series to come — was voted in the same year and the same; in a three-cornered race, Estes Kefauver defeated Crump’s man for the Senate, John A. Mitchell.)

That seemed to be that, except that Boss Crump, not quite in his dotage, was determined not to be bested, and had discovered an ambitious young war veteran in Dickson named Frank Clement, and, more or less as his last piece of power brokering in this life, boosted Clement against the man he considered a renegade and won handily.

Crump was able to see Clement relected one more time, in 1954, the year he died.

And, though there were various free-lance efforts by various of his former associates to re-tool the machine and maintain its dominance, E.H. Crump had named his last state leader, and, so, it would seem, had any force emanating from Memphis and Shelby County.

To be sure, a Shelby Countian, Dr. Winfield Dunn, a Republican, was elected governor in 1970, over Democrat John Jay Hooker of Nashville, but that victory arose not so much out of a local power base as it did from the tide of Southern Republicanism, which had begun in the aftermath of the civil rights revolution, finally washing into Tennessee. (All previous statewide elections, at least in the 20th century, had been decided in the Democratic primaries.) And the then young and dynamic Hooker happened also to have suffered some embarrassing business losses which tarnished his reputation and made voters look to an unknown.

And even Dunn decided to tarry in Nashville, the state capital, after leaving office in 1975. He is virtually an unknown figure in Memphis today, though the U-T college of medicine here is named for him, and that fact symbolizes Memphis’ exclusion from the political center as much as anything else in the post-Crump era.

When Nashville congressman Bob Clement, this year’s Democratic nominee, was struggling this fall to rise in the polls against former governor Alexander, he lamented, “If only we had the same kind of name recognitionÉ” For a scion of the family which had once dominated state politics after that initial boost from Boss Crump, it was an ironic confession and a sign of different times.

But the return of Clement, a frequent visitor, to Memphis this past weekend was another sign — one perhaps indicating the the Bluff City is, once again, where statewide leaders are confirmed.

“Shelby County is where it’s at,” said Clement Sunday night by way of explaining his presence here for much of the last weekend and for the last whole day before Tuesday’s statewide election which would, of course, decide his personal and political fate.

Clement, the Democratic congressman from Nashville’s 5th District, was well aware that the smart money and the pollsters had made Republican opponent Lamar Alexander a prohibitive favorite to win the Senate seat being vacated by the GOP’s Fred Thompson, and he had to have noticed that none of the network political talk shows had his race on their boards for discussion on Sunday.

But he soldiered on, showing up for a packed party in his honor at the Midtown home of activist David Upton , and his good-nature and dogged determinination shone through. Acknowledging the presence of his party’s 7th District nominee, Tim Barron, Clement told the crowd, “He’ll be around awhile,” and the crowd’s brisk applause for the prospect of Barron’s enduring as a political presence past the likely worst-case-scenario barely concealed a pang for veteran Clement, who was not likely to be so fortunate in the case of defeat.

“We’re going to win!” said one of his volunteer aides, Debbie Johnson, when asked to estimate the outcome, and her eyes shone with conviction, and Clement himself would nod sagely later on when reminded that the ultimate science might not reside with the pollsters, who have showed Clement anywhere from 6 to 12 point behind Alexander in the last week, but with the spirit of Werner Heisenberg, whose Uncertainty Principle established the preeminence of the observer, mayhap even the participant, in wrenching fate out of its seemingly predetermined paths.

And Shelby County, with its mass of black (i.e.,Democratic) voters and, for that matter, with its teeming suburban white (i.e, Republican) blocs, had become a special target for the major candidates in both parties in this last week of campaigning. The bottom line was this: Democratic candidates were dependent on Memphis’ large inner-city black vote; Republican office-seekers needed to whet up the equally huge suburban white vote. Either bloc could be crucial to a candidate’s hopes for success.

They had all been here over and over of late. Van Hilleary, the GOP candidate for governor, made a brief stopover Saturday night at the Republicans’ East Memphis “Victory 2000” headquarters with Sen. Bill Frist, and he asserted, “This is my fifth trip here in the last week, and I’m coming back Monday.” (Actually, he came only so near as Covington, where he did his best to rouse the distant suburban expatriates who in recent years have made south Tipton County a Republican bailiwick and whom state House Speaker made sure to cut loose from his district during the most recent reapportionment..)

GOP Senate candidate Alexander had been much in evidence the previous weekend, doing a two- or three-day stopover and making much the same point as would Clement, that Shelby County has the votes that would make the difference in this election. He was back again Monday night for a last rally at the Holiday Inn on Central Avenue, appearing with outgoing Senator Fred Thompson and making sure his listeners among the local Republican faithful were aware that he had chosen Memphis as his final venue on purpose.

As Clement — who made his last visit here Monday at an airport rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen, prepared by Memphis’ other major Democratic force, the Ford family — had done earlier, Alexander noted that Memphis had perhaps not received enough stroking from government, and promised to help remedy that.

And so, of course, did Bredesen, who has been back-and-forth to the Bluff City enough times — always praising its “vibrance,” even at the expense of Nashville, the city he led in recent years — to claim honorary citizenship.

The same could be said, even more firmly, for Marsha Blackburn, the GOP’s 7th District nominee and so confident of a victory over Democrat Tim Barron that she spent much of her time campaigning for local Republican nominees for other offices. Blackburn had, in fact, taken a residence on Highway 64 in Cordova for the duration.

And then there was the one exponent of a major statewide campaign who lived here.. That was Steve Cohen, Memphis’ midtown state senator, who, though not a candidate himself this year, was virtually synonymous with the cause of the lottery referendum. He, too, was heard from locally in these last day.

Flanked by Shelby County Democratic chairman Gale Jones Carson, who added her straightforward endorsement of the lottery referendum on Tuesday’s ballot, Cohen, father of that initiative and its nurturer for 16 long years, warned Monday at a press conference at his Midtown residence that lottery opponents were up to skullduggery as the vote neared.

As a flashing sign in his front window behind him kept cycling from “EDUCATION LOTTERY” to “VOTE” and back again, Cohen charged that Gambling Free Tennessee, the group responsible for a well-funded campaign against the lottery this year, had been operating under the radar of the state’s election code through a shadow corporation known as GFT,Inc., which, he said, was obligated to file financial disclosures and had not done so.

The organization, he said, could be a means of cloaking “illegal contributions or some they don’t want to divulge.” Casino interests he named as the most likely possibilities in the latter category, and he brandished a publication put out by Baptist opponents of the lottery which acknowledged that “gambling proponents” were also in opposition to it.

Whether tongue in cheek or not, Cohen said, “It was through divine intervention that we learned of this today [Monday] and not tomorrow.”

On Tuesday, as rains threatened to hold down voter turnout, Cohen was still on the case, gong from polling place to polling place and reporting, to his consternation, that Sycamore View Church of Christ, had a flashing sign, too, saying “VOTE NO ON LOTTERY” across the church’s marquee. “It’s digital. It works off a computer” a church secretary noted proudly, and in that sense the opposition had something of a lead on Cohen, whose own flashing sign at home had a homespun, neon look.

All the same, Cohen’s neon sign was a throwback to a former time, one in which Memphis personalities, Memphis interests, and Memphis constituencies loomed large in state affairs, and a time, in fact, which may have returned.