Is there anyone who will step up to take on Jim Cooper in Tennessee's 5th congressional district?

Flooding at Symphony Place and 2nd Avenue S in Nashville, Tennessee (3 May 2010) On Wednesday morning, our own David Nir made a compelling case for jettisoning "Democratic" Rep. Jim Cooper, who has represented the Nashville Metro area for a decade:

I've long believed that wankerish NoLabels-loving conservaDem Jim Cooper has deserved a primary challenge. It's not just his votes but his mouth: He's spent his whole career publicly undermining the Democratic Party, despite sitting in a safe district. (Tennessee's 5th Congressional District went for Obama by a 56-43 margin.) On Tuesday, though, it was his vote that mattered most: He was the only Democrat who said "nay" to $51 billion in vital federal relief funds for the areas ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Needless to say, this is an absolute outrage. How could Cooper do such a thing?

Cooper, of course, has been an apostate and an irritant for quite some time. Indeed, he's been this way for decades now.

I cannot begin to speculate on Cooper's motives here, besides him simply being a deficit peacock. Part of me wonders if this all traces back to his humiliating 1994 Senate defeat (when he hosed Bill Clinton on health care to defend his right flank and raise campaign cash, and subsequently lost to Republican Fred Thompson by 21 points). One has to wonder if, in Cooper's mind, it's always 1994, and the key to electoral survival is parroting Republican talking points.

In the end, it doesn't matter. There were many Democrats serving much more conservative districts who voted the right way. Hell, there were over a half dozen Democrats running in districts that favored Mitt Romney who voted "yea," for crying out loud. With this vote, to say nothing of the others, Cooper has more than earned a legitimate challenge to the Democratic nomination in what is, at the end of the day, a blue seat in Congress.

Finding Democrats in the district is not a difficult task: The district gave Barack Obama double digit margins of victory over his GOP challengers in 2008 and 2012. What's more, a strong majority of the elected figures in Davidson County are Democrats.

So, here is just a smattering of electeds in the district. Readers, particularly our Volunteer State friends, are invited to peruse the list below the fold and tell us in the comments whether or not they would make decent prospects.