In lighter news: it turns out that Steve Cohen of Tennessee just had a lot of bad behavior on his part over the years… rewarded… by the Tennessee legislature. While the federal redistricting process from Tennessee didn’t look particularly unusual at first glance (the 7R/2D Congressional split after the last election was more or less locked in by the process), it turns out that the state legislature’s new Congressional map removes switches out a bunch of Democratic voters used to Cohen for a bunch of Democratic voters who are not – and that part of the voters being moved include a key voting and fundraising bloc (Memphis Jewish voters) from Cohen’s district. If you’re wondering why that’s important, it’s because Steve Cohen is a white Democrat who has been representing a majority-minority district since 2007… and every primary election since then has been vicious. Extremely vicious. So much so that his likely primary opponent this go-round (Memphis Urban League leader & school board member Tomeka Hart) is apparently planning to play it a good deal smarter: which is to say, a good deal less race-baiting. Which, paradoxically – and coupled with the aforementioned switching of voters around – could seriously threaten Cohen this time.
Personally, I think that Steve Cohen deserves to get destroyed in the primary: he’s a nasty man who tells vicious lies about people who saved Jews from the Nazis (no, I haven’t forgotten this one). It may take ten more years to root him out of that district, but I’ll see the bigot gone at some point, and then I will cheer. And I applaud the Tennessee state legislature for giving us all some hope that it will happen this year…
We have a wonderful, conservative republican lady running against Cohen (or whoever wins the dem primary). Charlotte Bergman rocks!! We all need to support her.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/132502943500445/
That is a link to her Facebook group.
Now, if we could have the people wake up in East Tennessee and a good true conservative challenger emerge to defeat John Duncan Jr. from Congress. He is basically keeping the seat warm and votes with Boehner. No fighter for conservatism there.
Charlotte Bergman is the better choice.
I remember when Tomeka Hart first ran for school board. Hard to say if she’ll be much better than Cohen once there the Ds tend to fall in line with leadership, but can’t be any worse.
Oh, no argument that we’d prefer Bergman in there. But watching Cohen congratulate his opponent through gritted teeth on primary night has a certain appeal.
I have spoken with Richard Cohen. Apparently there are some people in my city with the same last name as me (my last name is unique). They are wealthy. Anyway, he was very interested in talking to me until he found out I wasn’t related to the well-to-do family.
He lies so easily. It is easy to lie when you don’t know what you are talking about. Often he doesn’t. he uses inflammatory language to get out of situations where he can’t come up with an answer.
I was pretty surprised Charlotte wasn’t able to do better than Cohen in 2010. I think in some parts of the city the Rs don’t even bother voting in mid-terms. As they know who will win. Others are just ambivalent.
Activists tend to target wealth ares to find new conservative activists, but I think that logic is flawed. Go to middle class and lower middle class and find Republicans that vote in those neighborhoods to get them active. Once rich, people tend to feel insulated from what happens in DC, whether they should or not.
I meant to say I was surprised she didn’t do better against Cohen than she did. It was unlikely that she would win, but it was important to oppose him.