TENNESSEE ELECTIONS: People are asking me what I think. The reason I haven’t posted is that I don’t have really strong opinions or predictions.

The governor’s race, between Phil Bredesen and Van Hilleary, could still go either way. I’ve had dinner with both of them recently, and my impression is that they’re both decent guys. (Interestingly, both stressed their strong Second Amendment positions — there’s just no real support for anti-gun positions in Tennessee nowadays). Bredesen’s ahead in the polls, but not by a lot. The most interesting thing is that the Republican, Van Hilleary, is running commercials calling Bredesen “BredeSundquist” — invoking the name of the state’s wildly unpopular Republican governor, who somehow managed to offend almost everyone with his various stances on the state income tax.

In the Senate race, Alexander is ahead, though the gap is closing. I have some students working for Clement who seem depressed about the race — if there’s secret good news in the polling (which some suggest there may be because Alexander has gone very negative in his ads, which is unusual for someone ahead at this stage of a campaign) they don’t know about it. I haven’t seen people this depressed since the final stages of the 1988 Dukakis campaign.

My local congressman, who voted against the Iraq war resolution, is running more commercials than usual. The Libertarian challenger is on the radio a lot too. Interestingly, their commercials are very similar.

People are predicting a low turnout, but the turnout at the early-voting sites is huge. I don’t know what that means.

So there you are.