Tennessee wasn't that much different than the rest of the South in 1984, though it was the only state in the region where Reagan failed to break 60 percent.
Mondale did pretty well relatively speaking in North Central Eastern Tennessee, where he actually did better than Carter in a few counties. This was also true of a few counties in western Virginia as well (although not in Alabama...his showing looks good in retrospect compared to Kerry, but at the time he did very poorly for a Democrat in northern Alabama).
Dukakis did very poorly in central and western Tennessee. He lost both Davidson county (Nashvile) and Shelby county (Memphis). Mondale lost both, too, but by narrower margins than Dukakis in each.
The one district in Alabama where you can see a real change is AL-04. Both Mondale and Dukakis got around 40% there, while John Kerry only got 28%. What happened here?
Kerry had very little appeal to white working class voters.
Something that people predicting that Obama will do worse than Kerry among this group should keep in mind. Kerry already did worse than Mondale and Dukakis with much of the working class....it can't really get much lower no matter how much racism is out there. Obama is not going to do as badly as McGovern did with these folks.....
