Even as Shelby County Republicans were gathered at the Hilton to hear {Alberto} Gonzales' sober-sided hedge to all-out Trumpism, some 150 Democrats were making moves to reassert some vision and presence of their own, celebrating "Obama Day" at the Madison Gallery under the auspices of the Shelby County Young Democrats, with Mayor Kelvin Buck of Holly Springs, Mississippi, as official host and Mayor Megan Barry of Nashville serving as keynoter.

The emphasis there was altogether on moving forward afresh, with a new national party chairman, former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, having been elected in Atlanta earlier Saturday and with visions of stronger candidate efforts for Democrats in the forthcoming off-year election year of 2018.

After months of making appearances up and down the length of Tennessee, former Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville, Barry's immediate predecessor, issued a formal statement making it official: He's a candidate for governor in 2018. Dean will apparently have some good local help from newly appointed campaign treasurer Calvin Anderson, a longtime aide to former U.S. Senator Jim Sasser. Anderson has just retired from several years as a Blue Cross Blue Shield executive (with a street newly named for him adjacent to the insurance giant's Memphis headquarters) and remains well-connected.

And, even though Nashville real estate entrepreneur and mega-donor Bill Freeman, who had been touching the state's bases in an exploratory bid of his own, decided over the weekend not to run, the state's Democrats will apparently still have a respectable gubernatorial primary in 2018, just as in their now vanished years of ascendancy.