Senate Sunday: In Tennessee, It's Former Gov. Phil Bredesen Vs. Actual Crazy Person Marsha Blackburn

Being a crazy rightwing teabagger may not be the winning formula Marsha Blackburn assumed.

Here's some encouraging news for your Senate Sunday: Former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has a ten-point polling lead over US Rep. Marsha "Why Isn't My First Name Michele?" Blackburn in the race for the Senate seat currently held by Bob Corker, who finally did one good thing in his useless Senate career last year when announced he would retire. Corker then did another good thing when he made a Twitter joke about the Trump White House being like an "adult daycare" and chaired a hearing on Trump's fitness to have the nuclear codes. Corker also voted along with fellow Republicans to kill Obamacare and pass the huge tax cut for rich fuckwads (which stood to make him richer ). Corker also briefly gave Blackburn a scare in February when he mused about not retiring after all, but ultimately decided he really is finished with Senating.

But back to that polling: Where earlier polls had shown the race fairly even, or Bredesen, who was the last Democrat to win statewide office in Tennessee, up by just a little, last week's poll by Middle Tennessee State University showed Bredesen with a 10-point lead over Blackburn, with 45 percent favoring the former governor, 35 percent for Blackburn, and 17 percent undecided. That's pretty impressive in a state where 61 percent of voters chose Trump in 2016.

Also good news for Bredesen: Tennesseans generally liked him while he was governor, and in the MTSU poll, many more Republicans -- 20 percent -- said they supported Bredesen than Democrats who supported Blackburn (just five percent). Independents preferred Bredesen over Blackburn by a wide margin, 45 percent to 33 percent. Yes, yes, it's just one poll, and November is a long way off. But Bredesen is well liked by voters of both parties, and Marsha Blackburn is Marsha Blackburn.

Blackburn, you'll recall, is infamous for being proudly rightwing and stupid, because that's been enough to keep her in the House since 2003. How dumb/awful is Marsha Blackburn? Oh dear:

• In 2009, Blackburn, while insisting she certainly believed Barack Obama was legitimately elected and legally qualified to be president, nonetheless co-sponsored the "birther bill," which would have required all future presidential candidates to show their birth certificates. Yes, even the white ones, so birtherismis not racist.

• She also supported a 2009 measure to strip the EPA of the power to regulate greenhouse gases, because she worried a tax on cow farts would devastate agribusiness. That same year, she demanded that Al Gore 'fess up and admit he was getting rich off his climate activism; Gore patiently explained the money went to an educational foundation, and when Blackburn pressed him, they nearly came to fisticuffs. 

• Blackburn voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, and also explained that women simply don't want equal pay if Washington's telling employers to pay men and women equally, because Freedom.

• Never a fan of that Obama fellow, Blackburn very publicly derided Obama's claim that he enjoyed skeet shooting, making her the first elected Republican to accuse a black man of not carrying a gun. The White House was forced to release this verified long-form photo of Obama firing a shotgun:

  

  That led to fun parodies and, inevitably, to Skeet Truthers, just in case you might have forgotten that politics went crazy well before Donald Trump (remember, Blackburn was elected in 2002).

• Blackburn also demanded to know whether the Boston bombers had Obamaphones, defended Americans' right to buy junk insurance,and went on CNN to "debate" climate change with Bill Nye, where she explained Nye was unqualified to talk about climate science since he's not a climate scientist. Not that she thinks climate scientists have any credibility, either.

• In 2015, Blackburn insisted that Christians in America face dire persecution, although she was unable to actually come up with any examples. She was widely mocked for the remarks, and then, hey, that was an example!

And of course, Blackburn led a Very Important Investigation into the bullshit allegations from propaganda videos claiming that Planned Parenthood trafficked in aborted baby parts, selling precious fetal tissue at yard sales (yard arms anyone?). Even with the perfectly not-screaming-MURDERER!-outside-a-clinic title the "Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives," the investigation found no evidence that Planned Parenthood was in the baby-parts business, but nonetheless recommended more investigations and ending federal support of health services at Planned Parenthood.

That was enough to at least spawn rumors that Blackburn was on Donald Trump's veep shortlist, and to spark a really stupid non-controversy when Twitter declined to take Blackburn's ad money for this fine bit of stupid in which Blackburn claimed she personally went into all the Planned Parenthoods and put a stop to PP selling off babby parts at Very Small Lots:

. @Twitter shut down our video ad, claiming it's "inflammatory" & "negative." Join me in standing up to Silicon Valley → RETWEET our message! pic.twitter.com/K3w4AMgW6i 

— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) October 9, 2017