JSDude1: MAYBE A good Democrat worth voting for?
There is no such thing, we are well past the point of entertaining supporting anyone who runs for Congress as a democrap in a general election. But anyway he's a kook who's website (currently crashed from too many people trying to look at it) touts his belief in conspiracy theories about NAFTA being a plot to merge the US with Canada and Mexico or some such crap.
As for Corker, he's a typical establishment Republican, far from the worst R in the Senate (he does NOT compare to Scott Brown to the person that said that, I don't like him but please get some perspective). Of the 2 in the state Alexander is worse and I hope he faces a tea party challenge in the next primary. But even he I would support over some random kook running as a D just cause he's a member of some small conservative group no one has ever heard of.
I'd say this guy did us a favor by winning but it truly doesn't matter in this instance. Park Overall? Some washed up sitcom actress from the 80's? LOL the TN rats have nothing. Clayton (who won cause he was first in the ballot order meaning the multitude of lazy fools who knew nothing about any of the candidates were more likely to vote for him) is the only guy who even got more votes that the nobody top challanger to Corker got in the GOP primary! The only thing this really changes is Corker's victory margin. Maybe he'll get 80% instead of 70%. Opportunity for the Green party to fight Clayton for second place.
It is nice to see them so embarrassed though. It is not that hard to round up a suitable sacrificial lamb and make sure they win the primary (well it is for South Carolina rats apparently hahahahahaha). Pathetic!!! :D
Good news in CD 3, Fleischmann fended off Wamp Jr.
I didn't bother requesting an absentee ballot, since there was no particular race I felt like I'd have an impact in (the local races are one-party Dem jokes). Although given how close the race for the 5th CD nomination was, where my preferred candidate won by just two dozen votes at last count, perhaps that was ill-advised on my part !
I think TN has become sort of Illinois in reverse over the last decade. Both used to be competitive two-party states (TN became winnable for the GOP in the 1920s and stood apart from the other "solid south" RAT states), but following Al Gore's embarrassing loss in 2000, the TN RAT party has really imploded and become a shadow of its former self. They had the Governorship from 2003-2010 only because RINO turd Sundquist poisoned the well for any Republican to succeed him, but the Dems lost that during the 2010 sweeps. They've failed over the last decade to win any other major office in the state, and seem to have simply stopped trying after 2008 or so. The last time was when they blew their wad with idealistic southern RAT candidate Harold Ford Jr. (folksy, uniter, black dude who appeals to whites.... this guy was the media's Barack Obama before they discovered Barack Obama!) and he lost to a sub-par GOP candidate.
Now the TN RAT party has become an non-threat at the statewide level and both they and the TN GOP know it. Of course they still have pockets in the state where Dems are successful and in power (urban areas like Memphis), but it's now a one-party GOP state at the statewide level. Even if there was another RAT presidential candidate in the future who was "competitive" in the south (Bill Clinton type moderate southern RAT), they probably wouldn't waste any resources in the formerly competitive states of TN and WV. Both have moved sharply into the GOP column in only 12 years.
Illinois is the reverse, if the state party does get involved and waste time and money putting up a sacrificial lamb, it serves no purpose. Look at what happened in 2008 when the state party laughably insisted that unknown clueless doofus Steve Sauerberg was the "only credible candidate" against Durbin, and used heavy handed tactics to make SURE he won the primary. The guy did worse than Alan Keyes in November! (of course, with the combine in Illinois, many would say that was the point and a bunch of GOP insiders struck a deal with Durbin to give him an "opponent" he could safely ignore)
I'm not sure if I buy that the RAT candidate is actually the "more conservative" choice in November, as others have noted, Corker isn't on the level of an Olympia Snowe or Mark Kirk style RINO, he's just a worthless squish. You do occasionally see flukes where the RAT candidate is more conservative though, I've seen two times where it happened in Illinois. 1998, with southern IL RAT Glenn Poshard vs. uber-RINO George Ryan (even we didn't know how bad Ryan would turn out to be back then though), and I think Judy Biggert had a more conservative RAT opponent (pro-life and pro-gun) a few election cycles back.