And in 1992, Bill Clinton was the most liberal governor. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.
When you ask such an inherently loaded question you have to accept that whether people care about the National Journal’s designation may actually involve fundamental disputation about the credibility of the rating mechanism itself, what alternative prism there might be for interpreting what it represents, and the very meaning of the phrase “liberal senator” in substantive terms.
In point of fact, your post presupposes that the rating and label is something empirical which can legitimately act as a distillation of Obama’s views and governance, such that moderates and conservatives can be reasonably asked their reaction to it. You then overburden the already weak structure of this approach by personally interposing your own definition of liberal as being an interchangeable pejorative term for profligate tendencies, and now you somehow want to exclude such oblique and slippery smuggled premises from debate.
Sorry, but that’s sophistry. If the NJ designation is something concrete which can be said to affect perceptions and voting intentions, it must be based upon a (contestable) broader extrapolation about how Obama’s tracking in Congressional polarisation means something in substantive terms for moderates and conservatives, about which you are asking.
If Joe Lieberman was the Democratic nominee, he would somehow end up ranked as the most liberal senator. It is complete bullshit.
This. For those of us actually on the left (and most democrats are not) he looks pretty conservative. Not compared to McCain sure, but still conservative. It’s all a matter of perspective of course. I sit in the Emma Goldman end of the left so maybe I’ll find any nominee a bit conservative but there were definitely more liberal choices available