Bredesen Receives National Education Award

Link: http://chattanoogan.com/articles/article_73345.asp

Snip: <posted September 28, 2005

Nashville – Gov. Phil Bredesen Tuesday received the “Gift of Reading” award from “Reading Is Fundamental,” a national literacy organization, for his efforts to promote early childhood education and reading in Tennessee.

“My number one priority as Governor is providing the best possible education for our children,” Bredesen said. “And the best investment we can make as a state is to ensure that Tennessee’s children have the tools they need to succeed in school and in life. Every citizen plays a role in this vital public service. I want to thank Dolly Parton for helping to give Tennessee’s children a love of reading, and I also want to congratulate my fellow honorees and Reading is Fundamental for their work to promote education across our nation.”

ov. Bredesen received the award at a ceremony in Washington, where he was honored for his Voluntary Pre-K Plan and his Books from Birth initiative.

Gov. Bredesen launched his Voluntary Pre-K Plan this fall with the opening of 300 new Pre-K classrooms in 106 school districts across the state. The plan expands Tennessee’s pilot Pre-K program, making it available to every four-year-old in the state by allowing local communities to determine goals, timetables and funding formulas for building new classrooms. Each of the 106 districts that applied for 360 new classrooms received funding for at least one.>

There is only one governor in the nation who has a lower job approval rating amongst his own political party, and that's Gov. Taft of Ohio with his recent pleading guilty to various ethics violations.

If Governor Bredesen wants to lift up his overall poll numbers, he needs to start mending fences with his own party base (the last Democratic meeting I went to was a Bredesen gripe session) and stop pandering to the talk radio crowd.

The full ranking of all 50 governors along with additional analysis is posted at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=179&topic_id=1648&mesg_id=2399

Is he going to be running again or is the party going to put someone else up?

While I suppose a primary challenge is possible, I would think the bigger risk is from a 3rd party candidate like Ed Sanders in the General election. At this point, Sanders or someone like him would easily pick up a great big chunk of disenchanged Democrats that Gov. Bridgeburner... Bredesen has terrorized (organized labor, TennCare folks, tax reformers). And then of course there are the Democrats who simply won't vote in the Governor's race... casting that "none of the above" vote.

While Bredesen may not be Dems favorite(me included) I'm not sure what he's supposed to do with voters in a state who voted for Dimson** twice - the second time even after all of the cuts to this state during the first term of Dimson**. These are the same people who don't want to pay taxes at the local level and they damned sure don't want an income tax so I'm not sure what it is they want Gov. Bredesen to do.

If this Ed Sanders can convince people to poney up the money to take care of the needs of the citizens in this state I'll take a look at him.

edit: forgive my bad manners, Welcome to DU! :hi:

I'll tell you who Ed Sanders is if you tell me who Dimson** is (forgive my ingorance).

Ed Sanders ran as a third party candidate for governor in 2002. I don't think it was the Green Party though... He might have ran as an independent, I forget. Anyway, he stood no chance of winning. It was a political statement by some progressives. He's a progressive African-American in the Nashville Community (I don't know a lot more than that, but a web search would turn up a lot I'm sure). He often at at a lot of the same events that I go to. He was a tax reform supporter by the way and often spoke out as the tax reform debate was in full force in those days.

Personally, I voted for Bredesen last time though as I viewed voting for a third party candidate as wasteful and no one knew at the time how bad Bredesen was actually going to be. Moreover, I still hold out hope that the Democratic Party can be reborn. Even if I don't end up voting for Bredesen again, which I probably won't at this point, I'll still work at the local level to get progressive Democrats elected both to public office as well as within the party itself.

I just can't in good conscious vote for Bredesen under any circumstances now... unless something changes dramatically.

Thanks for the info. on Mr. Sanders.

Just found this on the web...

Rev. Ed Sanders is pastor of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church and coordinator of Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy.

And I did confirm that he ran as an independent for Governor in 2002. He only got about 7,700 votes, over half of which came from Davidson Co., out of about 1.6 million votes cast.

Maybe if a lot of us progressives here in the state who are unhappy with Bredesen get behind him he would have a chance. Only thing I personally don't like about Bredesen is the whole mess with the health care program. I wish he would raise tax's on the top one percent and take a plan from Clinton's book. I think that would help out a lot. He started out this year back in January with a 70% approval raiting and now is like barely above 50% which is quite sad. :( I had/have high hopes for him personally.

Actually, the latest numbers for Bredesen if 48% approval overall and 48% disapproval. Even worse, among Democrats his job approval is more like 47%, with 53% approval among Republicans and 45% among independents.

I posted an extensive analysis of the most recent job approval ratings of all 50 Governors at http://www.democracyfortennessee.org/ - The long and short is that if you rank all Governor's by the job approval ratings among their own party members, Bredesen is tied for 49th. The only governor in the nation with a lower job approval rating amongst his or her own party than Bredesen is Gov. Taft of Ohio who is involved in some kind of ethics indictment.

As for replacing Bredesen from within the party, it's an uphill battle, but it can be done. Just last year an incumbent governor in Missiouri lost his own party's primary... unfortunately, I think the nominee who won the primary then lost the general election (I need to check that).

To win the Democratic primary over Bredesen, he will have to demostrate that he or she can win the general election, will need access to serious money as Bredesen is approaching $6 million in his account, and will need the support of lots of institutional players and party leaders... The last one is easy with everyone Bredesen has angered, and there are a number of very winnable candidates out there (as much as I like Ed, I don't think he's one of them). The real problem is money. Anyone got a few million to chip in?

If on the other hand it is just a disruptive vote of people who just can't vote for Bredesen regardless (like me), then it just has to pull enough votes away from Bredesen in the primary to either weaken him or make him move to the left... or as an independent challenge in the general election to throw the election to the Republican.

There are a lot of Dems I talk to who in hindsight, even though we all voted for Bredesen, agree that we would have been better off with Van. He would have proposed a lot of the same cuts as Bredesen, but as a Republican at least the Dems would have flamed him every step of the way and the state would just be stuck in partisan gridlock. It would have given the Dems someone they can beat up on publicly while rebuilding the party base to put a real Democrat in the Governor's mansion. It's a long-term strategy instead of the must-have-a-democrat-at-all-costs-even-if-he's-evil-like-Bredesen strategy.

I hear people keep referring to the fact that since we don't have an income tax, the TennCare cuts are just a sad reality. Let me say, not true.

I am a big tax reform supporter myself (including an income tax, food tax repeal, sales tax cut), and I think legislators and the governor are seriously misreading the public's opinion on this. MTSU poll after poll has shown 60% of Tennesseans support comprehensive tax reform like this... It's just that if you ask someone their position on simply, "an income tax," then you get like 35% support. Of course, no one, not Naifeh, not Rochelle, not Head, not Sundquist, not tax reform advocates, has ever introduced an income tax as a stand-alone proposal on top of everything else. It's always been as part of a package, so to poll people on just "an income tax" is frankly dishonest and misleading.

That said, the needs of TennCare can be, and should be, addressed separate from tax reform. There are a host of reforms that could be made to save hundreds of millions of dollars without cutting people off. Bredesen just won't do it because he is a vindictive and spiteful man who has a my way or the highway attitude. For the other funding needs that cannot be addressed with such reforms, one of the most sound proposals out there is a tax on health care providers.

The main problem with the whole TennCare thing is medical inflation which grows at double-digit rates. Even an income tax won't grow as fast as medical inflation, so while tax reform will help, it is not the end-all answer. Taxing health-care providers, drug companies, etc. on the other hand creates a revenue source that is directly tied to medical inflation and should grow at about the same rate as medical inflation. That's a sound policy solution.

From a political standpoit, it gives the Dems something to swing at the Republicans who fight against it... "Oh, so you want to protect Mr. Frist and all the rich drug companies instead of supporting working families!" Who was that former drug company CEO from NE Tennessee who loaded up the Republican Party's coffers with his pharma money?