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A candidate who trusted the intelligence of voters (in Nashville!) wins a decisive victory.
Nashville Elects a Mayor Who Is Serious About Jobs, Wages, Poverty
A candidate who trusted the intelligence of voters wins a decisive victory.
By
John Nichols
Yesterday 3:52 pm
The Nation
Megan Barry mounted a smart and nuanced progressive campaign for mayor of Nashville—so smart, and so nuanced, in fact, that it should cause political candidates and commentators to rethink what can he said and done on a political stage that is too frequently characterized by bluster and bombast.
Megan Barry speaks to supporters after she was declared the winner of Nashville's mayoral race. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Even if Barry had not won Thursday’s runoff election for the Tennessee city’s top job, her campaign would have been instructive. Because she did win, with a decisive 55-45 margin over a free-spending hedge-fund manager who suggested she was too liberal to lead a Mid-South city, Barry’s victory offers a powerful reminder that another politics is possible in cities across this country.
And in statehouses.
And in Washington.
Barry, an at-large member of the Metropolitan Council for Nashville and surrounding Davidson County who will serve as the city’s first woman mayor, earned national attention as a liberal leader in a southern city. (A New York Times article even noted that: “On a recent visit to her home near Vanderbilt, where her husband is a management professor, a copy of The Nation magazine sat atop a copy of Southern Living.”) And her campaign certainly hit plenty of progressive themes. She hailed diversity, declared that the police must treat everyone equally, highlighted the need to respect immigrants, embraced sustainability, and celebrated public transportation.
But it was on a host of economic issues that Barry distinguished herself. She criticized privatization, talked up public programs, and said three things that marked the expert of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (who included footnotes with her campaign pledges) as a significantly more serious contender than most local, state, and national candidates.
First, as part of her economic development platform, she specifically explained that “the private sector can’t do it all” and argued that it is appropriate to use “public investment to stimulate sectors of the economy that will benefit from a jumpstart.”...
Read more on this PROGRESSIVE WIN~
http://www.thenation.com/article/nashville-elects-a-mayor-who-is-serious-about-jobs-wages-poverty/
A candidate who trusted the intelligence of voters wins a decisive victory.
By
John Nichols
Yesterday 3:52 pm
The Nation
Megan Barry mounted a smart and nuanced progressive campaign for mayor of Nashville—so smart, and so nuanced, in fact, that it should cause political candidates and commentators to rethink what can he said and done on a political stage that is too frequently characterized by bluster and bombast.
Megan Barry speaks to supporters after she was declared the winner of Nashville's mayoral race. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Even if Barry had not won Thursday’s runoff election for the Tennessee city’s top job, her campaign would have been instructive. Because she did win, with a decisive 55-45 margin over a free-spending hedge-fund manager who suggested she was too liberal to lead a Mid-South city, Barry’s victory offers a powerful reminder that another politics is possible in cities across this country.
And in statehouses.
And in Washington.
Barry, an at-large member of the Metropolitan Council for Nashville and surrounding Davidson County who will serve as the city’s first woman mayor, earned national attention as a liberal leader in a southern city. (A New York Times article even noted that: “On a recent visit to her home near Vanderbilt, where her husband is a management professor, a copy of The Nation magazine sat atop a copy of Southern Living.”) And her campaign certainly hit plenty of progressive themes. She hailed diversity, declared that the police must treat everyone equally, highlighted the need to respect immigrants, embraced sustainability, and celebrated public transportation.
But it was on a host of economic issues that Barry distinguished herself. She criticized privatization, talked up public programs, and said three things that marked the expert of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (who included footnotes with her campaign pledges) as a significantly more serious contender than most local, state, and national candidates.
First, as part of her economic development platform, she specifically explained that “the private sector can’t do it all” and argued that it is appropriate to use “public investment to stimulate sectors of the economy that will benefit from a jumpstart.”...
Read more on this PROGRESSIVE WIN~
http://www.thenation.com/article/nashville-elects-a-mayor-who-is-serious-about-jobs-wages-poverty/
This is such great news, in Tennessee of all places!! Love it!!!!
Democrats being Democrats WINS elections, even in the south!!
65 replies
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He's so great, thanks for sharing that. 
This gives me hope! This should give all of us hope!!! 
I am not sure we are a smart nation.
Nuff said?
However, we are a hard-working nation and a bunch of other good things. Jobs, living wage, good education for our kids, health care, as level a playing field as possible for everyone, fair taxes, food and shelter through retirement. You don't have to be very smart to want those things.
A lot of money, time, energy and other other resources, however, have gone into "proving" Americans can't have those things and should not even want them and, no matter what, government can't possibly provide them.
Sid
Barry bet that Nashville, a city that leans Democratic but that has tended to elect predictably moderate mayors in recent years, was ready for a deeper discussion. Her wealthy opponent, David Fox, ran an expensive negative campaign that, the Nashville Tennessean reported, “set out to define her as a liberal far outside Nashville’s mainstream driven foremost by national social issues.” Swipes were taken at the candidate’s husband, Bruce Barry, a Vanderbilt University professor and the author of a number of vital books (including Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace), for his work with the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. A whispering campaign claimed the Megan Barry was an atheist.
Read full article first. That way you sound more informed.
But its nice to see you post more than usual, you know, with words.
