Photo: Andrea ZelinskiDavid Fox may not have any regrets, but he should.

He may claim that he wouldn't do much differently, but after losing by 11,000 some odd votes, there are plenty of decisions he should revisit.

Despite the ever-nastier rhetoric, it is possible to be a David Fox supporter without being racist or homophobic or anti-woman or anti-choice or a theocrat or a Tea Partier in moderate clothing or in favor of the utter destruction of the public school system or any of the other aspersions cast on Fox and those who backed him. Were some of Fox's supporters some of those things? Sure — just as it's possible (hell, even probable) that some of the 55,000 who cast their votes for Megan Barry don't check all of the boxes required to be an orthodox liberal.

Call me a Pollyanna if you must, but it is possible to support a candidate — even a conservative candidate — without being part of some hellish conspiracy bent on dragging the city back to the days of Jim Crow.

I have been critical of Mayor Dean and his go-along council plenty, particularly his devotion to big-ticket downtown projects, his use of tax incentives and the long-term debt implications thereof. Thus, Fox's message of pumping the brakes was appealing to me, while Barry's claim of the Dean 2.0 mantle was not. I didn't buy Barry's claim that Fox wanted "austerity" for Nashville, a word choice she made not just because it's a clever rhyme for "prosperity," but because "austerity" now connotes Greece-style cuts to the bone. What she wanted you to think was that Fox's dedication to minding the balance sheet was code for drowning government in the bathtub, and that his opposition to raising the minimum wage was borne of hatred or ignorance of working class citizens and their struggles (even though there are perfectly rational, mainstream economic theories that make clear-headed arguments against such increases).

If the Barry folks want to claim "Don't make us Atlanta" was a racist dog whistle or "muscular" was sexist or "The Nashville Way" was simultaneously a cynical ploy for African-American votes and a code for white supremacy, then they have to own that they, too, were playing the scare game.

Which brings us to Fox's big mistake: allowing Barry to play that game and bringing it on himself with all the talk about "extreme issues of the social left" (a nonsense phrase) and the like. The campaign he used in the runoff was crafted by outsiders from Texas, even though his rhetoric was about crafting a Nashville-specific future. He should have stuck to what he genuinely believed was The Nashville Way: fiscal pragmatism and a hands-off approach to broader social issues. There are plenty of voters to whom that sounds attractive, which is why he tried to tie himself to the legacy of Phil Bredesen even after the former governor endorsed his opponent.

Here's a full disclosure different from all the others you've grown tired of reading in the Scene: I voted for Fox on the first day of early voting and for the reasons articulated above, I was happy to do so. But in the time between that vote and yesterday, I felt more betrayed by someone I voted for than at nearly any other time in my life. I say "nearly" because I voted for John Edwards in two (!) presidential primaries, so Fox had a long way to go to reach the top of my betrayal list.

He stopped talking about what made him appealing. He stopped articulating a message of careful, thoughtful growth. He was, at the least, complicit in attacks on Barry's religion (or lack thereof or whatever) which obviously didn't have their intended effect, but had the very dangerous side effect of broadening what was fair game in the campaign.

David Fox is more conservative than Megan Barry, but that doesn't make him Donald Trump or Scott Walker or Jack Johnson (although at some point we should have a conversation about how "conservative" has ceased to have any meaning with the rise of populist reactionaries, and has led to a country where Trump is considered conservative somehow). There are degrees of conservatism, and during the general, Fox was able to make that clear. But by losing his way in the runoff, he allowed himself to be painted with the brush of every bugbear progressives fear about anybody to the right of Al Franken.

Fox not only betrayed the pragmatic and thoughtful conservatives and moderates who were his base of support, but in a weird effort to woo voters farther to the right — who certainly weren't going to vote for Barry — he betrayed himself.