This Just In - Obama Most Liberal Member of Congress

[FordPrefect]

@John Corrado

As of right now, Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate I know of who is advocating [snip]

Are you sure he isn’t a Canuck?

[Shodan]

@Captain Amazing

Well, as others have said…Kucinich is certainly more liberal now, but there was a time where he expressed more conservative views than he currently does, and that is pulling down his rating.

Flip-flopper!

Regards,
Shodan

[Jackmannii]

If we’re gonna have a Peace Department under Prez. Kucinich, it’s only fair to have a counterbalancing Department of War, like it was named in the good old days. Changing it to the “Department of Defense” was a wimpy move.

Further, we should subdivide the Dept. of the Interior into the Department of Environmental Protection and Climate Stabilization and a separate Department of Natural Resources Rape and Plunder.

I kind of like this yin and yang stuff.

[Captain_Amazing]

@David Simmons

The factual part is that the National Journal ranked candidates on a “liberal” and “conservative” scale that I can’t find on their website or in the OP cite.

It would be helpful to know what the scale is. After all “liberal” probably means one thing to the Hoover Institute and something different to the Daily Worker. What does it mean to the National Journal?

Here’s the 2006 scores:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm

Here’s the methodology:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/methodology.htm

Here are the Senate votes they took into account, for the ranking of senators:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/senate.htm

And here are the House votes:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/house.htm

The scale itself is “more liberal/more conservative than X% of the senate/house”

[Bricker]

@Captain Amazing

Well, as others have said…Kucinich is certainly more liberal now, but there was a time where he expressed more conservative views than he currently does, and that is pulling down his rating.

And the article in question acknowledges this.

So the OP’s objection to the article is unclear to me.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Bricker

And the article in question acknowledges this.

So the OP’s objection to the article is unclear to me.

For various reasons, “liberal” has come to be seen as a dirty word in politics. Back in 2004 John Kerry was rated by the National Journal as among the more liberal members of the Senate, and Republicans criticizing Kerry were quick to use those results to call Kerry things like “the most liberal Senator”, and paint Kerry as some sort of left wing extremist.

So, now, when Obama is running, and has a good shot at the nomination, and the National Journal ranked him, “the most liberal senator running”, I think the OP is just frustrated at the attacks on Obama and his record that seem inevitable…that Obama is just going to be portrayed as “that radical lefty”, the way that his opponents tried to portray Kerry back in 2004.

[Merijeek]

@Captain Amazing

For various reasons, “liberal” has come to be seen as a dirty word in politics. Back in 2004 John Kerry was rated by the National Journal as among the more liberal members of the Senate, and Republicans criticizing Kerry were quick to use those results to call Kerry things like “the most liberal Senator”, and paint Kerry as some sort of left wing extremist.

So, now, when Obama is running, and has a good shot at the nomination, and the National Journal ranked him, “the most liberal senator running”, I think the OP is just frustrated at the attacks on Obama and his record that seem inevitable…that Obama is just going to be portrayed as “that radical lefty”, the way that his opponents tried to portray Kerry back in 2004.

Basically. The thing is that, assuming Obama doesn’t get the nomination (he’s black, he’s potentially an Al Queda sleeper agent, blah blah etc - I doubt he’ll keep up the momentum into the primaries) I just know that whomever does get the nomination will suddenly be ‘The Most Liberal [person] in the [group of persons]’. And all the Rightards will believe it and parrot it.

-Joe

[Liberal]

[nitpick - pet peeve]

I just know that *whoever * does get the nomination…

[John_Corrado]

@Merijeek

Basically. The thing is that, assuming Obama doesn’t get the nomination (he’s black, he’s potentially an Al Queda sleeper agent, blah blah etc - I doubt he’ll keep up the momentum into the primaries) I just know that whomever does get the nomination will suddenly be ‘The Most Liberal [person] in the [group of persons]’. And all the Rightards will believe it and parrot it.

-Joe

Well, sure.

Do you really believe that once the Republicans choose their nominee, there won’t be a bunch of Democrats claiming that the person is really “an extremist”, which will get parroted all over Kos and the Dope? If Guiliani wins the nomination, any discussion of his stances on abortion or gay rights will be dismissed so that Democrats can focus on how much of a fascist-nazi-police-dick-sucker he is, and we’ve already had a year of Dope threads being opened on “OMG why did I ever like McCain he’s actually conservative OMG OMG OMG”.

If you’d like, we can next open a Pit thread about how much it sucks that people breathe air.

[Captain_Amazing]

I know I personally find the whole air breathing thing really frustrating. It makes it difficult to go underwater or climb mountains, and then there’s the whole “toxic fumes” issue.

But seriously, I’m sure that you’re right…that whoever wins the Republican nomination will be called a fascist or rightwing extremist or whatever. I’d imagine, though, when that happens, conservatives will be just as frustrated as liberals are about the other.

[Bricker]

@Merijeek

Basically. The thing is that, assuming Obama doesn’t get the nomination (he’s black, he’s potentially an Al Queda sleeper agent, blah blah etc - I doubt he’ll keep up the momentum into the primaries) I just know that whomever does get the nomination will suddenly be ‘The Most Liberal [person] in the [group of persons]’. And all the Rightards will believe it and parrot it.

Thus far, it seems to me that you acknowledge that he is, in fact, the most liberal candidate. If he drops out, someone else will be the most liberal candidate. If your ire is simply at the fact that the opposition will use this label as an attack point… frankly, I think it’s a legitimate one. A candidate’s voting record and a fair summary thereof is and should be grist for the political mill.

I don’t see anyone claiming that Senator Obama is the most liberal of all Senators – just that he’s the most liberal of the current crop of candidates, given the strictures mentioned in the article.

I don’t see how acknowledging that fact would make me a “Rightard,” but perhaps I’m still missing something.

[Malodorous]

@Bricker

Thus far, it seems to me that you acknowledge that he is, in fact, the most liberal candidate. If he drops out, someone else will be the most liberal candidate. If your ire is simply at the fact that the opposition will use this label as an attack point… frankly, I think it’s a legitimate one. A candidate’s voting record and a fair summary thereof is and should be grist for the political mill.

Do you agree, then, with the statement that “Obama is more liberal then Kucinich”? As others have mentioned, that’s the part that seems misleading.

I understand that if you count all of Kucinich’s votes from the beginning of his career, that you get a more conservative total voting record. But I doubt when most people hear the statement: “The most liberal member of Congress running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination isn’t Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. It’s Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.” they think that you’re defining liberal as somesort of career time average of their political views. They think you’re talking about the persons views at the time of the 2008 election.

Of course both sides make misleading statements about eachothers candidates, but that doesn’t mean its not valid to open threads to analyse these claims and complain about them.

[MovieMogul]

@Bricker

I don’t see anyone claiming that Senator Obama is the most liberal of all Senators – just that he’s the most liberal of the current crop of candidates, given the strictures mentioned in the article.

My problem is these “strictures” seem obviously contrived to get the desired result–label Obama the “most liberal” (when I think we’ve fairly established Kucinich beats him easily in this dept.)

I’ve been married for 8 years. Let’s say I had two dozen sexual partners before meeting my wife. Would it be accurate to label me “more promiscuous” than a single person who gets lucky twice a year? After all, in the same time frame, I’ve had more sexual partners! What about if you called me “more promiscuous” compared to a gay gigolo because you qualify “promiscuous” as “sex with women”?

This business of “averaging in” votes for positions long-since abandoned (which dilutes Kucinich’s rating) and using separate frames-of-reference (House vs. Senate) to make deceptively “analogous” comparisons is what’s wrong with this study. Sure, Obama’s more “liberal” by their own conveniently cherry-picked standard. That doesn’t make it true.

But it does make good press, and this “objective finding” can then be used to smear him among the GOP community who still run in fear of the dreaded L word.

[Bricker]

@ArchiveGuy

My problem is these “strictures” seem obviously contrived to get the desired result–label Obama the “most liberal” (when I think we’ve fairly established Kucinich beats him easily in this dept.)

I’ve been married for 8 years. Let’s say I had two dozen sexual partners before meeting my wife. Would it be accurate to label me “more promiscuous” than a single person who gets lucky twice a year? After all, in the same time frame, I’ve had more sexual partners! What about if you called me “more promiscuous” compared to a gay gigolo because you qualify “promiscuous” as “sex with women”?

This business of “averaging in” votes for positions long-since abandoned (which dilutes Kucinich’s rating) and using separate frames-of-reference (House vs. Senate) to make deceptively “analogous” comparisons is what’s wrong with this study. Sure, Obama’s more “liberal” by their own conveniently cherry-picked standard. That doesn’t make it true.

But it does make good press, and this “objective finding” can then be used to smear him among the GOP community who still run in fear of the dreaded L word.

It seems to me that people get tarred for positions they held long ago all the time. It’s not a practice that screams of intellectual honesty, I grant, but it’s done by both sides to both sides with comfortable frequency.

Nor is it entirely without merit. We’re entitled to speculate on someone who’s record has changed over time: does their new position represent a genuine change in their philosophy and understanding, or was it adopted for more cyncial (i.e., political) purposes?

[Liberal]

[nitpick]

“…someone whose record has changed…”

[BobLibDem]

It just needs the right spin. Just replace “most liberal” with “least like George Bush” and he becomes invincible. Whoever gets the nomination will be tarred as “most liberal” by the elephant party. They’ll run out of most liberal bogeymen about the same time they run out of number three guys at alQaeda.

[Bricker]

@Liberal

[nitpick]

“…someone whose record has changed…”

::

I stand ashamed. sirrah.

[David_Simmons]

@Captain Amazing

Here’s the 2006 scores:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm

Here’s the methodology:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/methodology.htm

Here are the Senate votes they took into account, for the ranking of senators:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/senate.htm

And here are the House votes:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/house.htm

The scale itself is “more liberal/more conservative than X% of the senate/house”

Thanks. I couldn’t get past the home page.

[DSeid]

I am proud of my voting record and of my stands. If some choose to call these positions “liberal” then I am proud to be called a “liberal”, if some call them “conservative” then I am proud to be called that. I call them the positions of a proud American. It is time we move beyond these petty attempts to divide by labelling.

-Future Obama sound bite.

[David_Simmons]

@Merijeek

Well, I guess we know who the Righties are afraid of this cycle.

Yes, ladies and gents, Barack Obama is the most liberal person in Congress.

Just like John Kerry was in 2004. Strangely enough, they didn’t list Kerry in this particular article. I wonder why?

Oh, well, nobody could possibly have predicted this one.

Fortunately for the GOPers, they can afford to whip this one out early, since their base won’t remember it when anyone else is The Most Liberal Politician In Politics.

-Joe

I’m not sure this will do much good in enlarging the GOP voters much beyond the 30-32% who still support Bush. I would think for many in the middle of the political spread this is a yawner.