Cohen: Memphis Has Never Been Split Except When it Was!

[memphis]

Parkway Village wasn't even part of Memphis back when Sundquist was in Congress. The old 8th included a little corner of Frayser ( far Northwestern Memphis) for whatever reason. The newly proposed 9th has a huge dagger full of white people in the heart of the city taken out. It's not the same thing at all.

[memphis]

Parkway Village wasn't even part of Memphis back when Sundquist was in Congress. The old 8th included a little corner of Frayser ( far Northwestern Memphis) for whatever reason.

Shoring up Tanner.

There was no need to shore up Tanner. He never had a competitive election. Not even in 1994. Most years, the GOP didn't bother to field a candidate. That's how safe TN-8 used to be for the Dems. If they were really concerned about shoring up Tanner, they could have given him more than a tiny corner of the city.

[memphis]

30k urban Blacks isn't that tiny, anyways.

We're a majority black county with a population of nearly a million people. It's not all that substantial a neighborhood. And calling Frayser "urban" is a bit of stretch. It was a working class white suburb many, many years ago. It used to have a couple of factories, which have long since closed. There are still a few white people left out there, though not by choice. It's about the most awful place imaginable. Neither the convenience of proximity to town nor the pastoral ideal of the countryside. Most of the whites in Memphis live in much more "urban" neighborhoods by any reasonable definition.

[memphis]

30k urban Blacks isn't that tiny, anyways.

We're a majority black county with a population of nearly a million people. It's not all that substantial a neighborhood.

It's 5% of a congressional district. It's big enough that it was a serious embarassment for Fincher to not be aware of it.

It was a big gaffe in my book, but nobody really cared in the district. And I don't know how BSB's math skills could be so poor. It's a neighhood of 30,000 people. Maybe 20,000 are voting age. So maybe 8,000-10,000 people in Frayser bother to show up to vote. In 2002, a pretty decent GOP year, coming shortly after 9/11, Tanner won 117,838-45,850. He won every one of the 19 counties in his district. Tanner's total in Shelby was almost exactly the same as his total for the district. In 1994, Tanner did even better than the 20 year incumbant in Memphis's majority black district. It was a solid Dem district with or without Frayser. Even if you had redrawn the district to give him some GOP areas in NE Shelby County instead, it still would have been a solid Dem district. Which is why the GOP in Nashville had to completely redraw the district. As weak a candidate as Fincher is, he could very easily lose to seat back to a rural Dem if they only had minor changes. The new map gives him a whole lot of suburban whites who always vote party line GOP. Although, he could very easily lose in a primary, as they're going to want a country club type like Marsha, not a gospel singer farmer from Frog Jump.

[memphis]

Cohen is an a-hole. I hope he gets primaried.

He gets primaried every two years by a black person who says the seat is rightfully theirs based in skin color. And not fringe people. Last time, it was the 18 year mayor of Memphis. And every time, Cohen destroys. Black politicians think they are entitlef to special, segregated VRA seats. Black voterd don't agree.