Tenn. leader cautions his fellow Democrats

WASHINGTON - Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who publicly called for fellow Democrats to resolve the party's presidential race by convening a superdelegates conference in June, says the party's eventual nominee will have a harder time winning in November than people might think.

In an interview Friday, he said that position was illustrated by a conversation he had recently in a restaurant near Chattanooga, Tenn.

"Four guys in a booth said, 'Phil, sit down, we voted for you,' and so I did," said the two-term governor, a moderate Democrat in a right-leaning state. "And one of them turns to me and says, 'We're all Democrats, who are you going to vote for? Hillary or Hussein?' "

Bredesen said the reference to Sen. Barack Obama's middle name adds to the hurdles Democrats will face in November. Tennessee might not be as electorally important as Florida or Ohio, but it is something of a bellwether state, having voted with the winning candidate in every presidential election but one since 1928.

The governor, who has not endorsed a candidate, also has publicly fretted that the battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is more detrimental to the party than is reflected in the media. "Obviously, Mrs. Clinton is a very polarizing figure, too," Bredesen said.

"Some Democrats seem to take it as a given that we're going to win the election - that it's a choice between a President Clinton and a President Obama," he said. "Anyone who assumes we will win just because Bush is so unpopular is very naive."

Bredesen, a former health-care executive, noted that when he ran for governor in 2002, the Republican incumbent was widely unpopular and the No. 1 issue in the campaign was health care. "And I only won by 3 percent," he said.

"What scares me the most this year is that this is a tough election and McCain has enormous appeal," he said. "It would be a tough race for either Democratic candidate in Tennessee. . . . That's sobering to me."

Another worrisome sign: Bredesen said some Democrats running for local and statewide office in Tennessee are now distancing themselves from both Obama and Clinton.

"One of the superdelegates said to me, 'I'm in a swing district and both of them are poison to me,' " Bredesen said.

INDIANAPOLIS - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a plan yesterday to keep more military-related manufacturing in the United States, calling it an economic and security priority.

Speaking at a plant here that builds transmissions for military vehicles, Clinton said she would limit the Defense Department's ability to buy foreign-made products, in part by making the agency consider the impact on U.S. jobs when it awards contracts.

The New York senator, seeking support in Indiana's May 6 Democratic presidential primary, said she would launch a "comprehensive review of our defense industrial base" to determine "where U.S. capabilities are lacking." It would involve doubling the Defense Department's basic and applied research operations.

- AP