If you want to call Tennessee Democrat Senate candidate Phil Bredesen a liar to his face, it appears you may have two faces to choose from. Because his campaign workers were caught on video admitting that Bredesen’s claim that he’d have supported Brett Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS confirmation is untrue — he only said it to fool voters.
The video, a product of a Project Veritas (PV) sting operation, also reveals that Bredesen is trying to conceal his ties to the national Democrat establishment and that the candidate’s underlings have contempt for Tennessee voters. They’re heard on the video (below) calling the state’s residents “ignorant.”
As PV writes on the apparent Kavanaugh lie:
Maria Amalla and Will Stewart, staffers in Bredesen’s campaign, both say on hidden camera that if he were in the Senate, Bredesen would not actually have voted to confirm then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh.They explained that the statement Bredesen issued in support of Kavanaugh was a political ploy to gain the support of moderate voters in Tennessee.
JOURNALIST: “Like he wouldn’t really vote yes [for Kavanaugh,] would he?
AMALLA: “No, it’s a political move… He thinks that like we’re down like half a point right now. It’s like really close and we’re losing by a point or two. So he thinks that if like by saying this he’s appealing to more moderate republicans and he’ll get more of them to vote for us.”
JOURNALIST: “I was so confused because I just can’t believe he would actually vote [for Kavanaugh.]
STEWART: “He wouldn’t. But he’s saying he would… Which I don’t know if it makes it worse or better. No, it makes it better…”
When asked to clarify that Bredesen is only saying he’d vote for Kavanaugh to “get the Republican vote,” Amalla, a field organizer for Bredesen’s campaign, affirmed, “Yes.” Amalla reiterated, “[Bredesen] thought that like by coming out in support [of Justice Kavanaugh] that it would get more republicans on his side. He wasn’t doing as well in the rural parts.”
Note that NewsChannel5 Network takes issue with the PV video, claiming the Bredesen underlings aren’t paid staffers but “interns,” “volunteers.” Tennessee officials, on the other hand, claim that FEC filings show that the individuals are paid staffers of the state’s Democratic Party.
Whatever the case, this seems like a typical fake-news-media tactic of trying to cast doubt on a story by focusing on one possibly incorrect, but relatively minor detail. The bottom line is that these revelations come from people within the Bredesen campaign.
As for the matter of misleading voters about the candidate’s ties to the national Democrat establishment, PV reports that Stewart and a colleague on the Bredesen campaign, Drew Marshall say:
MARSHALL: “We would scare all the people who would vote for Phil Bredesen, but not [Senate Democratic Leader] Chuck Schumer.”
STEWART: “Yeah, exactly, because there’s a lot of republicans who are going to vote for [Bredesen…]”
STEWART: “Yeah. And that’s how they’re messaging against us… that he’s gonna be a ‘toe the line’ democrat voter… Because there are people who loved him as Governor but won’t vote for a democrat for national office.”
Stewart reiterated the Bredesen Campaign’s commitment to appearing moderate for the election, “we’re trying to make it so it’s not about democrats.” Stewart makes clear Bredesen’s messaging is purely for political optics, saying:
STEWART: “Between you and me once Phil actually gets into the Senate, he’ll be a good Democrat.”
In this vein, Stewart also said of Bredesen, “Oh, yeah. Oh, he hates Trump, like yeah. He’s not going to be running for re-election. He can get in there and do the right thing” [i.e., the leftist thing].
The Bredesen staffers make clear as well that they’ve been instructed not to talk about the “blue wave,” no doubt because this would remind Tennesseans that a vote for their boss is a vote for Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and the Democrat establishment. Stewart apparently thinks this will work, too, as he at one point was asked if Tennessee voters were ignorant and answered, “Yeah.”
None of this is surprising. The Democrats are now a radical leftist party — defined today not by Zell Miller but socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with no place for moderates. And the Volunteer State has seen the Bredesen fake before: Al Gore used to masquerade as pro-life when he was a congressman from Tennessee.
Until he sought national Democrat prominence. Then he obediently made the transition to pro-prenatal infanticide.
There’s a lesson for voters here. Regardless of what politicians say while campaigning to woo the electorate, the reality is that they vote with their party 85 to 90 percent of the time on average. Thus, realize that whomever you elect, you’re not voting for that person’s campaign-trail “platform.”
You’re voting for his party’s national platform.
In other words, a vote for Phil Bredesen is a vote for Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
As Duke’s First Rule of Politics goes, in a representative republic, people do not get what they want. They get what they vote for.
Photo: Phil Bredesen
