#rsrh Steve Cohen (D, TN-09) suffers karmic redistricting.

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 viciousExtremely 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…