Maybe Mr. Meacham didn't get the "can't be civil" or the "kick 'em" memos. Or maybe he has just gone rogue…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/opinion/in-tennessee-a-microcosm-of-the-midterms.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion
"Mr. Corker upended state politics last fall when he announced that he would not seek another term. Suddenly one of the great prizes in American politics — a Senate seat in a narrowly divided country — was in play, and Mr. Bredesen, 74 and happily retired, was being beseeched to get back in the arena to run against the presumptive Republican nominee, the unapologetically Trumpian Ms. Blackburn, who boasted in her announcement video that she packs a pistol in her purse.
It’s now commonplace to call the Bredesen-Blackburn race a microcosm of the national story of the midterms. If the Democrats are to win outside traditional blue zones, they need to nominate figures in Mr. Bredesen’s moderate mold; if Ms. Blackburn triumphs, then the red Trump tide rises still. That much is already clear from national coverage of the race."