...statewide races in TN? I'm not saying that sarcastically, by the way, I actually don't know the answer. I do suspect that it's not easy, however.

Race is a significant factor in America.  Many in the South don't get it, and too many in the liberal blogosphere don't get it.  

Sure, completely ignore the Ohio GOP, "macacca", Jack Abramoff, and the Rick Santorum self-inflicted implosion. None of those moved any numbers.

The obsession with pounding down Harold Ford since Carville's comment is astounding. The man hasn't said or done anything to justify it, either. Ford has no sights on Jesus "H" Dean's position, folks.

Percentages are one metric but raw numbers would be intersting as well.

Ford got 48 percent of the people who voted but I would guess Kerry's percentage actually represents more votes in terms of raw numbers than Ford (Due to the naturally higher turnout for a presidential election)

Not sure how that would affect your ideas regarding the strength or weakness of the two campaigns but it would be interesting.

If this assumption is correct, it would indicate that even "elitist  white Massachusetts liberals" fare better than African American Tenneseans.

 You underestimate Harold Ford.  I am not a fan of let's fight a smarter Iraq war, the Terry Schiavo bill, anti-net neutrality Harold Ford, but most progressives in Tennessee realized that he was the best candidate with even a chance of winning.  Tennessee like most of the South has turned decidedly Republican in the manner described by Kevin Phillips in 1968.  This means that in statewide races Democrats will probably lose unless the Republicans run a tarnished candidate.  Corker was a mediocre candidate, not a tarnished one.  He ran racist ads, but that didn't offend many voters in Tennessee except those who wouldn't vote for him.  Tennessee doesn't have that block of swing voters who were offended by Allen's  macaca comment.
   Bredesen was elected governor with about 52% of the vote against Van Hilleary, a Republican who had a reputation as not very smart.  He appealed to the redneck vote but was too rough around the edges to sweep Bredesen with suburban Republicans who prefer candidates who are less confrontational.  The class element explains why Bredesen narrowly edged Hilleary in Republican Knoxville, a sure indicator of victory for a Democrat.   Many Republican business people felt more comfortable with Bredesen the businessman than Hilleary, the bible thumper who was allegedly nicknamed Gomer. The Republican businessmen chose wisely; Bredesen has gutted workers compensation and Tenn Care, the state system for medical care.  When trying to understand Tennessee the comparison should be made to the last cycle of Democratic governors in Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas.   Democratic candidates won against a candidate in Alabama who tried to imitate a monkey on television and a hypocritical bible thumper who offended the class sensibilities of the better element in South Carolina.  Ann Richards was a great candidate who defeated an oaf in 1990 then lost to George Bush in 1994 despite a great performance as Governor.  Bredesen's reelection reflects Tennessee's slower movement into Republican dominance, and Bredesen's triangulation skills.   Since the Republican business class embraced Bredesen, there wasn't enough Republican money for a serious challenge.    
   Against the background of the rise of hard Republican suburbs and the vanishing rural Democrats, Ford's taking 48% of the vote was a  
significant achievement.  Racism remains a potent force in Tennessee and most of the country, but no white Tennessee politician would have run as close a race.  Al Gore didn't come as close to winning as Harold Ford.  Gore would not be elected Senator today.  This is not a criticism of Gore.  In 1994 Jim Sasser, an 18 year senator who was in line to become majority leader, lost to Bill Frist.  Bill Clinton took Tennessee with a smaller percentage in 1996 than in 1992 despite prosperity and a mediocre Republican candidate.  Tennessee voters have a tradition of considering Democrats then returning home to the Republican party; Harold Ford deserves credit for coming so close to breaking that trend.  

Although I am not a Harold Ford, Jr. fan myself, I wish he had won so the Party wouldn't be beholden to Lieberman to hold the majority in the Senate.

That aside, however, I am impressed with what Ford Jr. accomplished in his race in Tennessee, although it is hard to tease out what was the result of his effort and what was due to the general discontent with Republicans.

I grew up in Memphis and have known the Fords for more decades than I care to admit. (My daddy used to vote for his daddy.) White racism remains strong in TN, and, sadly, being black remains a huge disadvantage in statewide races. He also had to overcome a lot of noise in the past 18 months about political scandals involving his family, even though there was never a whiff of scandal touching him. When I first heard that he was running, I expected him to poll in the high 30s.
48% exceeded my wildest expectations.

There are three reasons why.

He won and mobilized in a key district, 97% of the African American vote. In fact, the headwinds you are writing about here are much stronger - East Tennessee has had a history of voting straight republican predating 1960. Thats 46 years of republican voting records. East Tennessee has not sent a democrat to congress since the Civil War.

A presidential race, and a senate race are not valid comparisons. Kerry's performance in Georgia was much worse than this and , like Iraq and America - the GOP keeps their borders permeable.  Only 14 of 44 of presidential races ever occurred in which a Senator was elected President. Thats about 25%, or another way of looking at it, is that Americans are 75% more likely to pick someone from the executive branch to be a president. They hold different criteria.

So, looking at what you've written here you are comparing an executive branch election to a legislative branch election. Tennessee votes very differently in this regard, with the lead changing hands in the Governor's mansion three times in the past six elections, or about a straight 50 50 shot.

In other words, Ford ran a much stronger campaign than you've written about here. Like nuclear weaponry - the GOP has always used breeder reactors to build their base.  For a young, black southern democrat to run as strongly as he did  for a hard right Senate Majority Leader's seat, in a state that voted republican in these elections more or less predating 1960 with districts that have, for the history of the modern republican party - never voted democrat - is a significant accomplishment.  

You could of course, compare it to supreme court appointments if you want, as well. That would cross yet another branch of government. Tennessee legislates republican and their breeder reactor is safe, thanks to people that just couldn't find it within themselves to keep a guy named "corker" from becoming their senator.

I'm on half an ambien and about to collapse for the night but I had these numbers handy so I'll stick them here. I don't claim it's a perfect measure, and nothing in relation to 2004, but it does demonstrate how well Ford did considering the overwhelming liberal/conservative deficit in Tennessee.

It's a relationship between the liberal/conservative margin as indicated in the 2006 senate exit polls, and the candidate's margin of victory or defeat

• Tennessee 14-45; Ford -3 = +28
  
• Minnesota 25-30; Klobuchar +20 = +25
  
• Ohio 20-32; Brown +12 = +24
  
• Vermont 31-21: Sanders +33 = +23
  
• Pennsylvania 25-29: Casey +18 = +22
  
• Missouri 20-37: McCaskill +3 = +20
  
• Montana 19-34: Tester +1 = +16
  
• Virginia 21-35: Webb +1 = +15
  
• Maryland 26-25; Cardin +10 = +9
  
• New Jersey 26-24; Menendez +8 = +6
  
• Rhode Island 25-19: Whitehouse +6 = EVEN

I think the analysis here is spot on, the thing I think we may be missing here is that Harold Ford helped the Democratic cause greatly by stealing so much GOP oxygen.

A Dem winning Tennessee deep in their oh-so-precious southern stronghold scared the bejeezus out of them, and caused them to make some strategic blunders that we tend to believe only Dems can make.

I'm thrilled that the GOP wasted effort defending Tennessee that could have been spent in Virginia and Montana.

Now, a candidate who could actually WIN in Tennessee is much better than a candidate that just fakes the opposition into thinking that he can, so we should aggressively look into alternatives, realizing that the establishment will be fighting us every inch of the way.

But we should also be realistic-- there are only so many Testers out there. Strategically, a Ford running a quixotic campaign that scares the GOP beats the heck out of a Carter who runs a campaign that is inspiring but non-threatening.

And, as an aside, I'll take every Nelson-style Democrat who provides us a caucus vote and nothing else from a deep red state any day, and be grateful. Every such vote is a huge win for us, just like every Collins, Snow, and Chafee (oops!) is a huge win for them.

Let me just add to some of the other fine comments that not all percentage points are equal.  By the "[Candidate]-Kerry" math, Ford was a "better" campaigner than Claire McCaskill, but "worse" than Sherrod Brown.  The raw points totals, however, aren't as meaningful.

McCaskill's 4 point edge over Kerry included the decisive percentage points, i.e., the margin of victory.  Logically speaking, these are the hardest points to get - they are what you spend your money on and campaign for.  Anything past 50.1% of the two-party vote is just running up the score.  Given that McCaskill got the 4 most decisive points, I'd say that her campaign was impressive.  (You didn't include other Democratic losers like Carter and Pederson, but they may be instructive as well).  She also did so against the wind of incumbency and the fact that Talent had no "firable" offense in Missouri.  

Contrast that to Sherrod Brown, where the Ohio voters took the entire Republican leadership outside and shot it in response to a miasma in state politics.  Claire's 4 points are much more impressive than Brown's 7.  Given that Brown needed only 2 "decisive" points, the 5 points that he "wasted" (mathematically speaking) look unimpressive.

By the same token, Harold Ford needed 7 "decisive" points.  He got 5 of the 7, meaning that, in terms of "decisive" points, he did better than McCaskill or Brown.

If you look at in terms of "decisive" points:

Tester +10 decisive points
Casey 0 decisive points
Brown 2 decisive points
Klobuchar 0 decisive points
Sanders 0 decisive points
Ford 5 decisive points
Webb 4 decisive points
McCaskill 4 decisive points
Menendez 0 decisive points
Cardin -2 decisive points

Given that Conrad Burns gave away a bunch of points through sheer stupidity and corruption, I'd say Ford ran a pretty good campaign for the state he was in.

Now this "decisive point" analysis doesn't quite tell the whole story, because I think there is a 5-6 point incumbency advantage, and Klobuchar, et al. couldn't simply "walk" to the polls on election day.  But there is something to it.  Harold Ford gets 2 more points, and he's a hero.  

I think Harold made a lot of friends at St. Alban's (the elite Washington DC prep school he attended) and they are rallying behind him.

Airport Stunt and Dirty Ads did him in.  I was excited about Ford until I heard of his Airport Stunt.  Without that airport stunt, the Ad would backfire against Corker.

Ford was helped by a huge increase in the AA vote.  In 2004, AA were 16% of the electorate, but in 2006 that jumped to 21%.  So as much as one can claim that he was hurt by his race, he was also very much helped by it.  

Harold's "problem" was two-fold.  First of all, because of the Ford name and the Tennessee Waltz scandal, he was unable to associate Corker with Republican corruption.  But the second part of the problem was the lack of a real primary here.  The DLC crowned Ford as the Democratic candidate without ever giving anyone a chance to discuss non-conservative issues.  So the only issues that existed were entirely on GOP turf, and it's no wonder he lost.
 

This is the same website that over and over again mentioned the difficulty of a black guy running in TN, and how they thought some people would not be able to vote for Harold Ford because he was black.  Now, to prove a point, it becomes insignificant?

The reason the liberal blogsphere will still struggle for respect from time to time are posts like these where people attempt to cannibalize the party.  Not every Democrat is going to be cut from the same cloth, especially Southern Democrats, but if you guys want to sacrafice 13 states in a 50-state strategy, go right ahead.  No one seems upset that Larry Craig ran so far to the right.  I see no reactionary posts against him.

Further, to claim Ford and Lieberman are the same is just hyperbolic.  Ford would never have held the Party hostage in Washington.  He would've voted with us 80-90% of the time and helped push forward our agenda.  Lieberman will block it at every turn.  To compare the two just to prove a point is, quite frankly, well... I'm sure someone can pick the appropriate word better than I can, and hopefully make it sound less insulting.

One you (not surprisingly) omitted:

Lamont at 40 versus Kerry at 54 (-14)

How does this change your unfairly biased argument?  You spent the entire campaign calling Lieberman the Republican candidate, so it should be fair to include this race, right?  Does this mean that Lamont was the worst Democratic candidate in the entire country this year (and nearly 20 points worse than Ford)?

Whatever Sherrod Brown is, Matt, he is no more a populist than Harold Ford.  I had to go check out his website to see if I had been wrong about Brown and perhaps the other named "populists."

This is what I found:

Brown Fought To Lower Taxes For Middle Class Families

AMHERST, OH -- The Sherrod Brown campaign released a new television advertisement today that contrasts U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown's record of fighting to cut taxes for middle class families with Senator Mike DeWine's record of favoring tax cuts for the wealthy.

This is patented DLC talk that offers nothing at all to the lowest on the income scale but "empowerment."  Brown does rail against "free trade" - a mark in his favor.  He is against privatizing Social Security which is equivalent for a Democrat of being against human sacrifice.  No mention that he sees a thing wrong with taxing low paid workers for the primary benefit of the upper income while funding all manner of government largesse for others.

The South and Midwest have always been particularly amenable to populism. Were he alive Al Gore's father might be elected senator today - and not because he is pigmentally challenged. Junior probably has not the slightest chance.

The claim that liberals cannot win in the South with a populist message is  poppycock.  Jim Webb did just that in the heart of the Confederacy.

Best,  Terry

Had he won, Harry Reid could have told Lieberman to go to hell.  No, I am not happy he lost.  His was the close race I would be most willing to lose, but I am not happy he lost.

Amy Klobuchar is a classic Minnesota DFL liberal.  From the outset, she was so far ahead of her GOP opponent Mark Kennedy that she didn't need to run a single negative ad the entire campaign.  And Kennedy was the state Republicans' Golden Boy:  He was the one they were grooming for Better Things.  

Funny, I've never thought of George Bush as a Southerner, considering how much of his teens and twenties were spent in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Might this be a myth as well?

Ben Cardin has no legacy of racial insensitivity ON HIS PART.  The State party has a legacy of pushing who they want down everyone's throats and, so far, they haven't really wanted an African American in a statewide race.  Their bad, not his.

In another year, Ben might not have been able to overcome the antics of the MD Democratic Party.  The GOP opened up a wedge and luckily voters in Prince Georges County and Baltimore City decided not to go through it.  

I voted for Mfume in the primary as the more dynamic candidate, but Ben Cardin has a record of progressivism and inclusiveness, not insensitivity.  

I agree, though, that Ford really ended up a disappointment.

Well thought out and researched.  Good stuff.

It's an interesting article, Matt, but there reaches a point where it's unnecessary.  The guy lost and everyone is moving on with their lives.  I think I saw a headline somewhere that said, "What's Next for Ford?" but the question should be "Who Cares What's Next for Ford?"

I'm not from TN, and I didn't follow his campaign.  So, without defending Ford, let me ask why you felt the need to come out an attack him now?

You should put Pederson and Carter, at least, in the table.  Let's see how other serious challengers in red states did.  

Maybe Ford did worse, maybe he did better, I don't know, but they should be in the comparison.  

Hellooooo? Sorry Matt, but unless you're not a minority, you wouldn't even get it.

If Harold Ford was a White Man, he would have won by a landslide. It is remarkable.

Ford has much more charisma than Democrat Gov. Phil Brendesen & Brendesen won BIG. But white voters voted for the Corker when it came to the Senate race.

Even Al Gore could not carry his home state, and a black southerner came close until election day.

Even Barack Obama wouldn't carry TN as a Senator.

Corker was a weak candidate. There was a Wave & lots of anger with Iraq. But only the White candidate Brendesen run with it & won big.

Stop always doubting & questioning everything about the MSM. There are things that any person who understands politics will know with or without the MSM.

So, Matt, that's all you've got against Carville's argument?  Nothing