History of the Rural West Tennessee Democratic Caucus (Short Story) - 10/15/2015 11:41:19 AM
Ron,
Thanks for your comments. I am very new to this and yes, I have an late version MS Word program. Is there any way to re-edit the story, or should I delete it and re-paste from a lower version copy? I have photos and such and I hate it will not allow that to paste or attach as separate file.
I come from a political family...probably most historic in Tennessee and no one knows us. Why? Because we are just countryfolk who didn't have the money to donate in large sums to the commercially packaged politicians. When a Clement or Gore written up in Tennessee papers as if they are the Kennedy's of Tennessee, I know the writer knows very little of the real story. The Clements descend from our family and got their claim to fame because we ran Frank Clement for a Governor spot when my grandfather died in 1944. My family is rarely mentioned in Tennessee history books because we were always "fighters" and never tried to be "fake" public servants.
Most all of the people I mentioned in this article (many have passed on) turned Republican in the 1990's. Jimmy Naifeh stayed a die-hard democrat and poor guy as so many other southern democrats who hang onto the past, just don't realize todays democratic party are more communist than ever (they have bypassed Socialism). For my dad to be so partisan back then only to change to republican later tells a lot of the truth of how parties can change!
Anyway, thanks for your comments and if you know a way I can re-edit this story to read better, I would appreciate your advice.
History of the Rural West Tennessee Democratic Caucus (Short Story) - 10/15/2015 11:20:25 AM
Your statement, "but rather wealth vs. poor; big business vs. small business; urban growth influence vs. rural farms and countryfolk," pretty well describes the situation today!
As I read, I found the dense formatting, probably caused by trying to paste your text into the AD editor from a late model of highly formatted Microsoft Word, and the dense writing difficult to follow, particularly about all the politicians that came and went during the course of the caucus history. Therefore I didn't read it all. There seem to be a lot of family dynasties in politics and I don't like that. I much prefer every citizen have an equal chance when it comes to serving at every level of the government. Family dynasties controlling politics seem to have done more harm than good.
For members of the caucus families, and Tennessee political history buffs, your article may be of some use for future people doing research. For example, when researching the story of a friend of mine, Herbert Morrison of Hindenburg fame, I learned that he ran for Congress in Pennsylvania as a Republican twice in the 1950s but didn't win. But for me, I would have preferred a more general discussion of the caucus's influence on Tennessee and national politics over the 40 years that it held power. You write in your bio that books and paper will last forever. Books and paper are deteriorating fast. I think that electronic publications like this one, easily researched on the net and held in backup servers, will far outlast books and paper.
I recently read an article sent around by conservative Republicans proclaiming, "The real history of Democrats." The article cherry picked the Democratic conservative past as being diametrically opposite to the moderately liberal Democratic Party of today. This is true. It is also true that the Republican Party was started by highly progressive and liberal elements in Wisconsin opposed slavery and the wealth and cruelty of Southern slaveowners. Both parties have changed and will probably change again.
Ron
