Cobb

Ford's father held the seat before he did. His father put the word out when he was about to retire that if anyone ran against his son he'd have his throat slit. They come from a long line of funeral directors...so they would have the capability to hide the wound.

Even though Ford Jr. does come from the bourgeoisie of Tennessee, you have to know his constituency. It IS black...but it is also white and OLD.

The AARP is fighting this tooth and nail. Harold is conservative. He isn't stupid.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and make another prediciton..................The honorable congresswoman from our great state of California, Nancy Pelosi..............will NOT cross the isle and vote for SS reform. She will vilify Bush more than a dozen time over then next 3 months, possibly calling him a ........."Nazi" or "Fascist"..........accuse him of wanting to put grandma out on the streets, just to line the pockets of his rich wall street friends (wait.......I thought his friends were rich Texas oil)........anyway, I'm gonna so predict

Keep up the good work

"His father put the word out when he was about to retire that if anyone ran against his son he'd have his throat slit."

Whoa, I never heard that. How come Steve Cohen is still walking around?

You mean the Steve Cohen folks have been touting for all types of national level offices in Tennnessee?

Well, I don't know about national offices. But I do remember that he ran against Jr. in his first primary and had a kind of fit when he had his head handed to him. Which was silly, because everybody knows that seat is a Ford seat as long as one of them wants it.

Have to watch it, though. I called him a "dingbat" in a blog comment somewhere and he actually emailed me to ask why.

Just jokes.

Jr. was in law school at Michigan while I was there. I've interacted with him once or twice. He was cool as far as those type of things go.

But one of the administrators at Michigan used to work for his father, closely. He relayed the story to me about the prospects for anyone who decided to run against Jr. Given Cohen's record, I'd imagine Ford was thinking about two types of challengers:

1. Black challengers.

2. Legitimate challengers.

There is a SIGNIFICANT amount of overlap between the two.

Lester, that is about the most circumspect way of saying what you just said that I could ever think of. (It reminds me of myself commenting about a rather large woman, that her surface area-to-volume ratio was smaller than mine. In the context of the effectiveness of the ice packs at physical therapy, my way of stating it made sense, but the therapist still cracked up.)

This is actually why I used the d-word, although I didn't admit to that because I didn't want to hurt Sen. Cohen's feelings. He actually thought he might win b/c he's done so much for the black community. Well, maybe he has; and maybe they know about it; and maybe they're very grateful; but that is a Ford seat for as long as there is a Ford who wants it. And then he had the nerve to say after the election that he thought we'd all moved beyond race. First of all, why did he think that, no one else does, and secondly, that really has nothing to do with the fact that a Ford was going to get that seat.

Actually, I think Harold is kind of cool. Years ago my kid and two or three others gave a little speech at an anti-sweatshop rally at her school. (Forgive me if I've already mentioned this.) The news people showed up and my kid was on the news that night. Anyway, Harold spoke briefly, without notes, and gave a very coherent speech with a beginning, middle, and end. I was extremely impressed, especially since I know his schedule is probably stiff with things like this every day. Maybe Cohen would have done just as good a job, but he wasn't there, and Harold was. So probably he deserves that spot, independently of his last name.