Is The TNDP Managing Their Public Relations Properly?

19 Responses to “Is The TNDP Managing Their Public Relations Properly?”

1. Dr. Jellyfinger writes
   April 24th, 2009 8:50 am

   Exactly, Newscoma. Exactly.

   If you go back through these threads, you will see that I have been harping on this subject for months. Again, this is about Chip’s competence as the leader of an organization. This is one of the many areas in which he has utterly failed.

   Harrison and TennRod have also focused on Chip’s competency. Heatseeker will have to speak for himself.

2. Steve Steffens (LeftWingCracker) writes
   April 24th, 2009 9:51 am

   In this regard, even I have to agree, Dr. J. They do not get out in front of stories and instead allow them to be driven by anonymous posters on blogs.

   Of course, it would have helped if the Governor’s office hadn’t been out to destroy him from the start, but still…

3. Mike Turner ( Blogging as MIke Turner ) writes
   April 24th, 2009 10:20 am

   This new setup for the party would be used or will be used no matter who is the party Chairman. Chip Forrester is the Chairman and is in charge of the party and it’s expanded functions, yes I said expanded functions. We have got to build a county by county organization and we have got to dominate the internet and all of the new media opportunities, an area that or party has been seriously lacking for some time. Chip Forrester ran on these principles lets get behind and let him do his job and the rest of us just need to be Democrats.

4. Mike Turner ( Blogging as MIke Turner ) writes
   April 24th, 2009 10:22 am

   Sorry I had a couple of type-o’s for all of you Stacy Campfield Fans.

5. Dr. Jellyfinger writes
   April 24th, 2009 10:26 am

   Geez, Cracker, you are delusional, obsessive, and paranoid. Chip has done himself in through incompetence. That’s his own fault.

6. Dr. Jellyfinger writes
   April 24th, 2009 10:29 am

   Look, Turner is right. This is the best it’s going to get with Chip as chair. I’ll get on board with it, and everyone else should, too.

7. TennRod writes
   April 24th, 2009 11:31 am

   Now, Mike, don;t mislead. It’s pretty obvious Chip is no longer in charge of candidate recruitment efforts, fundraising, or deciding how any of the money going to the new “fundraising entity” is going to be spent. I can;t see that as “expanded” responsibvility; instead, they are severely constricted. And a good thing, too.

   Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you to the Governor, our Congressional members and our major donors for devising a way to save our party and give us a real chance to take back the State House of representatives next eyar.

8. common sense writes
   April 24th, 2009 11:33 am

   Agree with GoldnI’s comment on Newscoma’s blog - you can’t have a full communications staff if you don’t have the money, and you can’t have the money if you don’t have donors, and you won’t have donors if Bredesen is using in-house staffers to attack the TNDP. As for controlling the PR, the real issue is that Kleinheider, Schelzig, Woods, and others are more interested in quoting anonymous sources than they are in talking to the elected officials themselves, or to actual party leaders willing to go on the record.

   The TNGOP has a full-time PR staff, as well as the PAC $$$ and the talk radio and the direct mail budget and everything else. What they don’t have is a set of issues worth running on. You can’t get very far in a recession by trying to blame the opposition without coming up with solutions of your own. This is one big reason why the GOP is less popular than legalizing marijuana, and less popular than Venezuela.

   I agree wholeheartedly with HFJ’s statement from the press release: “Great crises create great opportunity. We can make Tennessee the best place in the country to live and work. But it’s going to take Democratic vision and leadership. I know we’ll rise to the occasion.”

9. Dr. Jellyfinger writes
   April 24th, 2009 11:36 am

   Agreed on the TNGOP’s lack of message. Also agreed on the need for funds to hire a communication staff.

   Chip showed clearly that he has no capacity to raise money on his own. Democrats now have a structure in place to raise money and move the party forward.

10. fingering tennrod writes
    April 24th, 2009 11:37 am

    Who cares about which person brings in the money? As the Bible says, “Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.” The bottom line is that both the Governor and Forrester (and every elected official in the Democratic Party) are united in a commitment to create jobs, develop sustainable growth, produce clean and renewable energy, provide a world-class public education for Tennessee students, and develop expanded access to affordable, high-quality healthcare for every man, woman, and child in the state of Tennessee.

11. Steve Steffens (LeftWingCracker) writes
    April 24th, 2009 11:41 am

    How could Chip bring money in when Bredesen cut off the spigot? WTF?

    Bredesen controls the candidate recruitment, which means any one he gets is going to make our friend Mike Turner look like Che Guevara by comparison.

12. common sense writes
    April 24th, 2009 11:50 am

    Democrats raised plenty of money, but they didn’t respond adequately to division within or negative campaign tactics/smears from the GOP. In 2008 cycle, TN GOP effectively used the “divide and conquer” strategy between Clinton and Obama supporters, rural v. urban, business v. labor, pro-life v. pro-choice, etc. I don’t think that is gonna work anymore.

13. Mark Rogers writes
    April 24th, 2009 12:13 pm

    Common Sense,

    In what reality?

    Republicans didn’t have to ‘divide and conquer’ Clinton and Obama supporters. The two campaigns did an admirable job of that themselves.

    Look at the Democratic presidential primary results and then look at where Democratic voter turnout didn’t reach expected levels. In some counties she defeated him by 3x or 4x or 5x. Later in November, lots of Democrats just didn’t turn out for President Obama. That pulled down several candidates.

    Your problem is with the attitudes of Democratic voters, not Republicans.

14. spaz writes
    April 24th, 2009 12:41 pm

    You idiots don’t get it.

    Putting Bredesen’s people in charge of candidate recruitment is exactly the kind of thing that we’ve had the last few cycles and why we have been losing.

    The best thing that could happen is for progressives who have ever wanted to run for state office to do it in the next cycle.

    Let’s see who actually has the support of rank-and-file Democratic voters - real Democrats who aren’t ashamed of Democratic values or Bredesen’s brand of Republican-lite corporatists who don’t even end up winning anyway no matter how much money they raise.

15. Eleanor A writes
    April 24th, 2009 12:52 pm

    I’m sorry, but this is the biggest load of horse manure I’ve ever seen.

    What it is, is a blatant end-run around the state Party chair, who was - I might point out - elected by members of the state Democratic Executive Committee, who are themselves elected on the ballot during Gubernatorial election years same as any other elected official.

    Yeah, it sucks that their only option as opposed to the Bredesen selection, Bone, was Forrester…but that’s what you get when you allow your Party to atrophy the way TNDP has. And I’m no fan of that Executive Committee, the average age of which is 60+, and tenure of which is at least ten years per member. There should have been better options, which is exactly what I’m talking about when I discuss really endemic problems within TNDP.

    There has been nearly zero turnover in Party leadership in the last ten years. This is because things are set up to centralize control in the hands of a few, through more techniques than I have time to delineate right now. There’s nearly no transparency going on at TNDP. How come we’re not allowed to know who represents TN to the Democratic National Committee, for example? Their names aren’t anywhere on TNDP.org. Why are they the same people year after year? Etc. I could go on and on with the same lack of accountability these people and many others have reliably shown for decades.

    But it’s all gonna fall on deaf ears, because there’s always some convenient excuse. In 2000, it was freaking Charlton Hesston. In 2004, Bredesen ran down Kerry volunteers to reporters, and then wondered why they were demoralized. In 2008, supposedly Democrats wouldn’t turn out to vote for a black man, and this is to blame for the House losses. And on and on and on.

    WHEN are you people going to realize, that to sell cans of Coke or beans or anything else, you have to differentiate your product from the others? Right now there is ZERO difference between the GOP and Democrats in Tennessee.

    Simply put, NObody wants to look in the mirror and take responsibility for the state of things. That would require something like political courage, which last I checked is in short shrift in this state.

    Did any of you even think about the fact that Rosalind Kurita was the highest-ranking woman Democrat in the state? Guess what: TN Dems have elected a whopping total of one woman to Congress in the last 70 years. There has been ONE female Party chair. You guys fell all over yourselves to support the gay marriage amendment, and now in 2012 it’s apparently gonna be the anti-abortion amendment, which simultaneously recruits mouth-breathing right wingers to the polls and alienates people who would under any reasonable circumstances be strong supporters of Democrats. Great job. Why don’t you hand the Republicans a few more sticks to beat us with?

    Why SHOULD we believe anything we’re told by Party “insiders”? This is nothing but a ploy by Bredesen to regain and keep control over the Party to use for his own ends. Everybody knows he’s mad as hell he got passed over by the Obama admin; of course he’s going to run for Senate. It’s the height of patronization to pretend that we don’t know this and that we’re unaware this anti-Forrester movement has been sponsored and financed by Bredesen to a great extent. He dries up Forrester’s fundraising and we’re supposed to jump for joy when he comes back to save the day? Give me a BREAK!!!!

    Come back when you’re prepared the respect the intelligence of mature adults who know when they’re being fed a line of bull. Sorry, this just really makes me angry - just another layer of lipstick on an animal that’s just looking more and more porcine by the minute.

16. Andy Axel writes
    April 24th, 2009 12:53 pm

    This new setup for the party would be used or will be used no matter who is the party Chairman.

    Um, did the Executive Committee hold a vote on this?

17. Eleanor A writes
    April 24th, 2009 12:58 pm

    Of COURSE they didn’t. Those pesky voters might interfere with what they’re being told is good for them…and we can’t have that.

    (Yes, this ties into the Kurita thing. The VOTERS OF TENNESSEE installed Republican leadership and letting Wilder continue to be Speaker was a slap in the face on the part of the electeds. I can understand wanting to hold onto power, but I personally also know rank corruption when I see it. Also, you can’t tell me the reaction to Kurita would have been the same had her first name been Raymond.

    It’s like living in a banana republic around here sometimes, I swear to all that’s holy.)

18. Mark Rogers writes
    April 24th, 2009 1:23 pm

    Eleanor A,

    And the woman that the Democrats elected to Congress got there replacing her husband on the ballot following his death.

    Tennessee has had only one woman in Congress without benefit of a spouse who was a candidate or Congressman. She is both a Republican and a Conservative and she beat four excellent opponents who all outspent her.

    Meanwhile the #3 Republican State Senator is Diane Black. The Speaker pro Tempore is Jamie Woodson.

    The Republicans have had at least three party chairs who are women.

19. Donna Locke writes
    April 24th, 2009 2:15 pm

    It’s difficult to believe there aren’t qualified people who could and would volunteer to help the TNDP with communications and PR — something that could lead to a paying position later if money isn’t available now.