ON TWITTER, DONNA BRAZILE IS BRAGGING ABOUT THE GORE CAMPAIGN VS. ROMNEY’S. Well, brag away, but remember that through a mixture of arrogance and incompetence you threw away Tennessee, and lost the election. Just sayin’. Here’s how the Gore Campaign treated Ned Ray McWherter, former Governor and House Speaker, when he came to tell them they were in trouble and to offer advice:

A tale from Ned Ray McWherter’s 2000 experience, told to a reporter last week, will illustrate.

He had made a 10-day trip through the state, mostly in East Tennessee, as a Gore surrogate campaigner and returned, as instructed, to give a report to the campaign’s national headquarters in Nashville.

His travels, McWherter says, left him with a sense that things were going badly for Gore in his home state.

He had a plan, involving some personal campaigning by Gore, for turning things around.

“I sat there for about an hour in the headquarters, wanting to make a report to the people running the campaign. They sent somebody out and said they were busy.

“They put me off another hour or two and, well, my old butt got tired, and I got up and left. They were so busy they wouldn’t even talk to me and I was going to tell them they were about to get the hell beat out of them in East Tennessee,” he said.

“I left word with Johnny Hayes. He said he couldn’t get in to see them, either,” McWherter said. “They had other places to worry about, I guess.”

If Gore had carried his home state, he’d have been President. And anyone with any sense would have listened to Ned Ray about Tennessee politics. Ned Ray didn’t look cool but he was the smartest Tennessee politician of the last 50 years. But some idiot staffer just saw an old man who didn’t look very cool, had no idea who he really was, and lost the election. So, heckuva job, Donna! And a reminder that this peculiar combination of arrogance and ineptitude didn’t start with Obama. It’s just been perfected.