I hate to break it to all you folks who live outside the state and are having fun Monday morning quarterbacking (or whatever the day after a football game is) but the reason he lost is because there are more repug voters in TN than Dems. Sad, but true.
George W. Bush who, in most of the rest of the country, has an approval rating of around 30%, enjoys a
49% approval rating in Tennessee! Do you hear that?? A 49% approval rating. Astounding. Nearly unbelievable. You
must factor that into an analysis of Ford's loss. If you don't, you're left with the Ford-drove-the-progressives-away baloney. Yeah, some progressives turned away from Ford, but most progressives realized that in order to effect change in this country, we had to elect a Democrat -- Ford -- to the Senate . . . and those progressives voted for Ford in huge numbers.
Ford lost by 50,256 votes. The votes for all the other, non-major party candidates combined was 23,676. Does anyone really think it's likely that all those votes were progressives voting for someone else and that over 26,000 additional progressives simply stayed home because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Ford -- or, even more inconceivably, voted for Corker?
Look at the numbers. It is simplistic to say that Ford lost by about "21 votes in each precinct." While it may be, arithmatically true, it's not an accurate assessment of the situation. Check out the counties where the "progressives" live. In Nashville/Davidson County, Ford won by nearly 2 to 1. In Shelby County, Ford won by 2 to 1. In tiny, rural Grundy County, which has a median income of $22,959 (national is $41,994) Ford won with 60.8% of the vote (these are Roosevelt Democrats out there!). However, in Nasvhille's donut counties with high repug populations (e.g., Williamson, Sumner), Corkie ran away with it: Williamson County gave Ford 19,679 votes, but gave Corker 40,843 votes; Sumner County gave Ford 18,974 votes, but gave Corker 26,996. Out of the 106,492 votes cast in those 2 counties alone, Corker came away with a 29,186 vote advantage. Trust me when I tell you that progressives are in a minority in those 2 counties!
The Ford campaign knew how many votes they had to hit in those donut counties -- they didn't have to win the counties, but there was a goal of votes that they had to hit in order to win the state. I worked in Sumner County and, frankly, we did NOT hit their/our goal of 22,873 votes.
Here's another factor in the equation: TN had a gay marriage constitutional amendment on the ballot, which brought out the repug Evangelical base.
Tennessee is NOT a microcosm of the nation. Ford didn't play here because the issues that got Dems elected in most of the rest of the country did not play quite as strongly, or with the same resonance, here in TN. If anyone thinks s/he can run a true progressive Democrat in this state and win a U.S. Senate election please, come on down here and do it!! We'd kiss your feet!
Stay strong!