How's My Prognosticatin'?

I wrote a long column slightly more than year ago called The Tennessee Senate 2006 Race. I revisited it today and it's holding up surprisingly well.

Try this:

Ford also has another problem: a significant part of his power is his national reputation, on which he has become dependent. With the national party in severe flux following a decade of losing election cycles, he finds himself having to defend his Clinton/DLC tactics against a leadership falling under the sway of the Howard Dean / MoveOn.org / antiwar, anti-America Left. Moderates and centrists are being thinned out, made to toe the line, in order to draw sharper distinctions against Republicans. Ford's co-optation instincts are frowned upon....

Ford is a student of Clinton and Bush, admitting it willingly, who each won with similar tactics of wide appeal and issue poaching and personal charisma. His desire to stay near the middle puts him at odds with the still left-moving national party, who are starting to flex muscle against DLC legacists such as himself.

Speaking of Harold the Lesser, he officially announced his Senate candidacy yesterday... in Nashville. And he had the nerve to say this:

"[W]e still have the same group of people who made the decisions on this war in charge in Washington," he said.

"Frankly, if these guys lived in the real world, they'd all be fired by now."

A Two-fer! First, Ford supported the decision to go to war, so I guess he's criticising himself. He's still there, and wants to trade up, no less. If you count his father, then they've been in Washington for over thirty years now! How's that for hogging?

Second, Harold the Lesser hasn't lived "in the real world" since his birth. Most of his life is spent in Washington and New York and Los Angeles, in the upper political and economic strata. His education was private school -- St. Albans, the school for politically aspiring young men. He vacations in Miami, Florida, and lives well down there, which I've documented before.

I predicted in that 2005 post that this would become a hot topic for him. And it has.

Want more Ford fun? His very first, official, campaign fundraiser is where? Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville? Nope. New York City! With Sarah Jessica Parker.

Yeah, real home town homeboy there. Close ties to the folks back home. Lots of local money supporting him. Take a look at his financials:

1. He has more PAC money supporting him by a more than two-to-one margin over any other candidate.
2. Of the five major candidates, he's the only one who is raising more more from out of state than in state! Fifty-nine percent of his campaign donations come from elsewhere than Tennessee.
3. Three candidates have out-of-state cities as one of their five "top metro area" origins of donation: Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary list Washington, DC; Rosalind Kurita lists Denver (?). Harold Ford has three: Washington DC, New York and Chicago!

Yeah, real nice work there, Janus. One face is the "home town hero" and the other is the cosmopolitan, jet-setter. Where's the man in the middle?