Progressive Punch ranked him in their bottom 9% of progressive candidates even though his district is a blue leaning district.

Mike Lux on Jim Cooper - link here.

Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position. I was never so delighted to see a Democrat lose as when he went down in the 1994 GOP tide.

Unfortunately, he came back, like a bad penny.
It is such a huge mistake for Obama to use a guy like this to defend their position on health care. The signal it sends to reporters, organizations, and activists like myself who know something about the old health care battles is that Obama truly doesn't care about comprehensive health care reform or universal coverage, and that the health care package you would propose if President would be a conservative, pro-insurance industry bill. The campaign ought to be trying to reassure folks who care about this issue, and using a guy like Cooper does just the opposite.

Cooper about Murtha

"Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), a leading Democratic moderate, who called Murtha's whole effort "clumsy."

Cooper's email to Kossack jnhobbs

I voted against the House version of the FISA bill last Friday because I do not think we can risk our national security any longer.  The House version accepted nearly all of the provisions contained in its Senate counterpart.  It does not achieve more than the Senate version, but is instead the product of a partisan political contest.

The House version may not use the words "retroactive immunity" for telecom companies, but it does let these companies off the hook. Likewise, it will also not bring the Bush administration's wiretapping activities of the last six years out into the open. Anything the administration provides may only be reviewed in closed, secret court proceedings

Kossack McJoan about Cooper.

Could he sound more like Joe Lieberman in whining about partisanship? But at least Joe didn't just lie about what the bill does.

Jim Cooper is defending his bad vote by lying to his constituents. Don't let him get away with it.

It has also become a pocketbook issue for Mr. Cooper, and whatever the fate of his health plan, he is already a winner. In less than a year, the mild-mannered Democrat from the most rural House district in Tennessee has become the toast of health care providers and insurance companies, which have channeled tens of thousands of dollars of contributions to his campaign for a Senate seat. Mr. Cooper is only one of the many politicians benefiting from the fund-raising frenzy set off by the national dialogue over health care. Since drug companies, hospitals, insurers and doctors have so much at stake in the legislation that may emerge from the Congress, many are investing all they can in lawmakers whose proposals would be most favorable to them -- or the least damaging. They are showering millions of dollars in donations to members of Congress with prominent roles in the debate, like Mr. Cooper, whose plan is the alternative to President Clinton's proposal most often preferred by business because it neither requires employers to provide coverage nor limits insurance premiums.

Despite Barack Obama's claim that his campaign represents a mass "movement" of "average folks," the initial core of his support was largely comprised of rich denizens of Wall Street. Why would the super wealthy want a percieved "black populist" to become the nation's chief executive officer? The "Obama bubble" was nurtured by Wall Street in order to have a friend in the White House when the captains of capital are made to face the legal consequences for deliberately creating current and past economic "bubbles." Wall Street desperately needs a president who will "sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street." Who better to sell this "agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?"

X-Posted at Dkos