On Aug 29, 2008, at 6:29 PM, Chuck Bennett wrote: > As for extremist, that is the very reason Obama is trying to run to > the center. He has a perfect 100% on the liberal voting scale.
Source? I know that National Review says he's the most liberal Senator, but they said Kerry was the most liberal Senator in 2004, and I think it's clear they're cooking the stats so that whoever's the Democratic nominee comes off looking more liberal than he is. Examples include labeling a vote against foreign ownership of US ports as "liberal", when it's really neither liberal nor conservative. (It's not like the vote was about union dockworkers being displaced... it was about port security.) The fact is, Obama's pretty much in the center of the left wing of Democratic politics. If you look at his health care plan, he's arguably to the right of both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. And really, more liberal than Ted Kennedy? More liberal than Russ Feingold? Here's a ranking that's produced by actual political scientists with no axe to grind. It's still fuzzy because "liberal" and "conservative" aren't precise terms, but it seems roughly accurate. Feingold's at number 1; I'm surprised to see Dodd at number 2... there's clearly a lot of fuzz in the rankings. Anyway: <http://voteview.com/sen110.htm> Obama's tied for tenth place, out of 51 Senators, tied with (amusingly enough) Joe Biden. Other Senators in his ideological vicinity include Jack Reed and Frank Lautenberg. Clinton, Schumer, and Reid are all tied at 20. McCain is ranked 94, more conservative than Obama is liberal, which jibes with what I know of his actual voting record, as opposed to his speechifying. So much for maverickyness. -Patrick _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
