Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen is largely blaming the national Democratic Party for Tennessee Democrats’ fall from grace with Volunteer State voters on Nov. 2.
“I think it’s very clear [this] turned out to be a national election,” Bredesen said last week. “I mean, there were people who were voted out of office in the state Legislature for whom there was no particular reason for that to happen based on either their districts or the way in which they conducted themselves as legislators.”
In the Nov. 2 elections, Republicans took three previously Democratic-held congressional seats, won the governor’s chair, ousted 12 state House incumbents and won two open seats.
“This election got nationalized,” said Bredesen, who is finishing the second of two terms and could not seek re-election. He will be replaced by Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, a Republican.
National-level Democrats must “get re-established as the party of people who … shop in Walmarts and go to Waffle House,” he said. “And people have got to start listening to these people and not the advocacy groups and the unions and everybody else that we have as these constituencies.”