Voting Early but Not Often in Nashville

I cast my first primary vote early as a Tennessee resident today and I think my PJ Media colleague and friend Christian Adams of the Election Law Center would approve not only of my choices but, more importantly, how it was done.

What stood out for me was, unlike in my former state of California, where they don’t ask for identification of any kind when you vote, Tennessee is one of only eight states to require a photo ID. (It also requires a voter registration card.)

Forget that such photo IDs are mandatory for all U.S. citizens and foreigners when they get on a plane, among literally dozens of activities, when it comes to voting this requirement is regarded as racist by our supposedly progressive friends.

Actually, as with so many “politically correct” assertions, the reverse is true. The implication behind this argument is that minority citizens — unlike the rest of us — are either too stupid or too lazy to obtain either driver’s licenses or non-driver identity cards that are available gratis in every state in the union. How insulting and, to be blunt, racist.

It’s also a not-so-subtle stratagem for manipulation. I know because I engaged in it. Back in the civil rights movement (1966), I was doing voter registration in South Carolina. We would bring cotton pickers in from the fields to register, many of whom, in those days, were illiterate. So we… I… would sign for them after their X and when asked which party they were registering for I would, naturally, fill in “Democrat” for them without even asking. What a despicable thing to do!

That was then, this is now, and I’m not filling in “Democrat” for anybody, especially myself. But that’s, of course, what the Democrats are doing to this day in their great desire for people to register without documents (sound familiar?). They’re not being charitable to those people. They’re being charitable to themselves. They are today’s slaveholders.

Back to the experience of voting here in Nashville. It went pretty swiftly in the Belle Meade City Hall, but I was used to that. After I switched to the GOP, I could vote in a minute in my old district in the Hollywood Hills. Democrats had a line around the block.

Things are a bit different in Tennessee. Watching the candidate ads on TV you feel as if you’ve gone through a time warp. The gubernatorial candidates are all competing with each other in a contest for who backs Trump the most. Even Phil Bredesen, the Democrat ex-governor running against Marsha Blackburn for the Senate, doesn’t entirely separate himself from the president in his ads, saying he agrees on North Korea but opposes the tariffs. (Wonder if that’s changed since the EU announcement.)

A lot of local folks like Bredesen, especially since he’s credited with bringing the Titans to Nashville, but I’m definitely sticking with Marsha. Bredesen may be a centrist, but he would be caucusing with Maxine and Company and that’s enough to turn the Buddha into a homicidal maniac. Today’s Democratic Party seems headed off to the left of the Labor Party of Albania.

In other contests, I voted for Beth Hartwell for governor, the ex-speaker of the Tennessee assembly credited with keeping the budget in line in a state that’s done an estimable job in that regard.

I voted for Joseph Williams, an intelligent political newcomer I wrote about earlier, to replace her in the assembly.

I had breakfast with Williams and his campaign manager after I wrote the previous article and continue to be impressed with him. You hold your breath these days for anybody going into our politics. The best of them — like our “Mr. Smith” Devin Nunes, now Washington’s Public Enemy No. 1 in this superb column by Kimberley Strassel — are destined to take more incoming in a week than most decent men and women should have to endure in a lifetime.

Where Williams will be in a few years will be interesting to see. Will he be the next Nunes or go the way of Robert Redford in The Candidate with its famous last line after winning: “Now what do I do?” I’m betting on the former, at least on a local level, but I wouldn’t be surprised either if he ends up a private citizen again, like most of the best people in our country.

Roger L. Simon – co-founder of PJ Media and its CEO Emeritus – is also an author and screenwriter. Go follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon before its corrupt management removes even more of his followers.