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Do we even speak the same language? Yes, they compare representatives to other representatives. The most liberal representative was a woman named Linda Sanchez. Since the house and senate didn't vote on the same bills, they cannot be directly compared and the survey made no attempt at such a comparison. Now, if you are so ill-informed to think that a man like Barack Obama is actually more liberal than someone like Dennis Kucinich who, unlike Obama, has voted against continuing to fund the war, against any and all incarnations of the patriot act, wants to completely scrap NAFTA (Obama thinks it can be fixed), and is sponsoring a bill to extend medicare to all Americans rather than working through our existing insurance system, you may need to consult a dictionary.

 

i was waiting for you to bring that up. they actually compared kuchinich to obama & found obama to be more liberal. http://myclob.pbwiki.com/Obama+more+liberal+than+Kucinich,+analysis+reveals

"WASHINGTON _ 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.

And the Republican candidate who's grown less conservative over his years in Congress? Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Those are among the interesting findings in a recent analysis of votes by all the members of Congress who are running for president.

They cut to the heart of debates going on among activists in both major parties: Can a liberal Democrat win a general election? Which Republican is ideologically pure enough to win support from conservatives?

The study, released this month by the National Journal, a respected inside-the-Beltway research report, will help voters cut through the spin and hype of TV sound bites in coming months and judge these candidates for themselves.

Unlike TV commercials that focus on a single vote, these rankings are based on comprehensive voting records. The 2006 scores, for example, were based on as many as 95 votes on such issues as federal spending, tax cuts, the war in Iraq, embryonic stem-cell research and border security.

On the Democratic side, the analysis of "lifetime" voting records shows Obama with the most liberal ranking with a score of 84.3 after two full years in the Senate. Under the National Journal's ratings formula, that means Obama's record was more liberal than 84.3 percent of his Senate colleagues. Kucinich's lifetime record, meanwhile, was more liberal than 79.2 percent of House of Representatives members.

Editors at the National Journal note that they don't compare Senate voting records directly to that of House members because the votes often differ. Nevertheless, the ratings show that Obama's Senate record is more liberal than Kucinich's in the House.

On the Democratic side, the analysis of "lifetime" voting records shows Obama as the most liberal with a score of 84.3 after two full years in the Senate. The most liberal score possible was 99. The lifetime liberal scores for the other Democrats, in their respective chambers:

- Kucinich, 79.4

- Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, 79.2

- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, 78.8

- Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, 76.8

 

Martaug, taking floor votes out of context and weighting them arbitrarily is not a good indicator of liberalism or conservativism. They are an indicator of floor votes. If you can't learn to think critically enough to recognize this, you should at least learn to capitalize and use punctuation.

Undeniably, Obama is liberal, but he doesn't hold a candle to what you find from Russ Feingold, the late Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, or John Edwards' most recent electoral platform. Learn to recognize partisan hackery when you see it, kid. It's starting to get pathetic.

 

typical liberal behaivour, show him the evidence from a well respected publication that he doesn't like & he resorts to personal attacks. cute drew real cute.


oh , if you would like to know what their methodlogy is in assigning the scores: http://www.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/methodology.htm

 

At least he doesn't resort to death threats martaug. Guess that is the difference between liberals and conservatives. When liberals do not like what they hear they disagree and attack the sources, when conservatives do not like what they hear they wish death upon the people saying the things they do not want to hear.

 

Chill, people. No need for name-calling and exchange of insults just yet. It's not even the general election.

 

joacqin, what the he!! are you talking about? who has made a death threat.

 

I am not in favour of posting private messages but if you don't mind martaug I could and see your reaction on things you disagree with.

 

and that has what to do with the current discussion ?

 

To be fair, it is really difficult to determine who was more liberal between Obama and Edwards based on voting records alone for one really big reason: They never served in the Senate at the same time. Edwards did not seek re-election in 2004, and that was the year that Obama won his seat in the Senate. There literally is not a single bill, floor vote, committee vote, or any other vote you can come up with when both of them voted, because there was no overlap in their Senate terms.

The other lesser problem in the comparison is that is seems Edwards has become MORE liberal since leaving office in 2004. If he had been present in the Senate between 2004-present, we may have seen that his voting record was more liberal than Obama's. Obviously though, we can only speculate on that point as no such record exists.

Finally, as we have seen time and again, perception is much more important to the typical voter than voting records. The fact remains, regardless of whether you are Democrat or Republican, that 99% of people don't go back and examine candidates voting records, and certainly they don't specifically formulate scores for how liberal or conservative they happened to be compared to their peers. Those within the Democratic party consider people like Edwards and Kucinich to be more liberal than Obama, and frankly, the only people's opinion that matter on that subject are those who would consider voting Democrat.

With all due respect Martaug, it certainly seems that your affiliation is with the Republican party, and thus, how you and other Republicans view the different Democratic candidates is largely immaterial - because you won't vote for any of them. You are certainly not unique - about 1/3 of all voters vote Republican no matter what, and about 1/3 of all voters vote Democrat no matter what. Since you certainly appear to be in the 1/3 that votes Republican no matter what, it makes little difference in how you perceive the Democratic candidates because none of them will earn your vote. Similarly, it doesn't matter how the 1/3 of people who always vote Democratic view the conservative policies of the different Republican candidates, because there's no way they are voting for them. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that candidates focus on the 2/3 of the voting public who actually might vote for them. They tailor their public perception to that group, and writeoff the other 1/3 as people whose vote they cannot hope to win.

As someone who originally supported Edwards but switched to Obama after Edwards left the race, I can tell you that the reason I originally supported Edwards was that his platform was more liberal than Obama's. Granted, I did not base this on what appears to be the all-important voting records, but what each candidate said they would like to do as President if elected. IMO, hearing the candidate explain what he stands for in a stump speech is more informative than his voting record, as a voting record does not give you reasons why certain measures were voted for or against.

 

actually aldeth i voted for a democratic sheriff for 15 years he just was the best candidate. but he was what i would call an old fashioned democrat not real liberal more moderate & i agree with that it is difficult to judge the records when there is no overlapping. oh , i would have still voted for the sheriif but he decided to finally retire & then i moved counties(what a clusterfudge we have here right now)

 

Voting records of junior member of congress and senate are immaterial. I find it laughable that anyone makes a big deal of it. Deals are made all the time -- and there are a number of 'gentleman agreements' used in both houses. For example, if a member is unable to make it to vote for a specific bill, his or her vote is noted and a person who has the opposite vote will abstain (so the net result is the same). If multiple members are unable to vote, junior members are usually the ones required to change their votes in order to have the same net result. That Obama voted party line in nearly every case is just an example of how the system works.

 

Actually, now you mentioned junior senators, what's the difference between them and senior ones? IIRC Obama is the junior senator of Illinois, and I remember once reading an article that stated that as such, he doesn't have much leadership/experience in Senate affairs.

 

All it means is that the other senator of your state (all states have two) has been in the senate longer. John Kerry is the "junior Senator" from Massachusetts, since Ted Kennedy was there first and has served longer. Kerry's been a Senator for, IIRC, over 30 years, so the term "junior" doesn't specifically denote a lack of experience or a lower rank.

 

DR has the correct definition for junior and senior from a specific state. When I used the term "junior" I was implying a more broad definition -- basically new to the hill. It's usually the first term senators and first or second term congressmen that are asked to adjust their votes.

 

But that's the ironic beauty of it all: Who would seriously have believed, in 2004, after the defeat of John Kerry, that in 2008 the most liberal candidate, who also happens to be black, would have a decent chance of being elected prez? It's really quite wonderfully astounding! Thank you, GWB. We always knew, deep down, that you would be good for something....

 

Chandos, the same exact group use the same flawed methodology to find John Kerry the most liberal Senator back in 2003. While I agree that it's great that we are seeing a leftward shift in response to the Bush administration, I think we can both agree that there are plenty of Senators - let alone, representatives - who are more liberal than Obama.

Incidentally, Kerry hasn't come close to that #1 ranking either before or since. To show just how flawed and arbitrary their system for determining whether a vote was "liberal" or "conservative" is, I'll give a few examples. The vote to establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators was considered a liberal vote. So was the vote for the final passage of a bill implementing the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission’s Homeland Security recommendations, as was the vote to block individuals from serving on Food and Drug Administration drug advisory panels if they have conflicts of interest. Where I'm sitting, none of those votes strike me as inherently liberal or conservative. If their standards are this meaningless, how can we expect the results to be meaningful?

 

Agreed!

 

Now this is an interesting thing I had not heard before. Following last night's primaries, and assuming that Obama nets approximately half of the remaining pledged delegates from Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota (he'll probably do less than half in PR, but more than half in MT and SD), he'll only need about 50 more superdelegates to make it mathematically impossible for Hillary to win the nomination. However, if enough supers remain uncommitted, he could be left in a type of poliitcal no-man's land.

We won't know what the official magic number is for the nomination until next week, when the rules committee meets to decide what to do about Michigan and Florida. It seems like the most likely outcome is to do what the Republicans did - Florida and Michigan would each get their delegates cut in half. That would likely place the magic number at 2,131 - so more than the 2,025 that the Obama campaign is currently claiming by omitting FL and MI, but less than the 2,230 that the Clinton campaign is claiming by counting the FL and MI delegates in full.

The bottom line is if Obama gets about 50 more superdelegates, Hillary would be more delegates short than there are delegates left to win - making it impossible for her to win the nomination. However, if enough supers stay uncommitted, Barack may also find that he is short of the number as well. That's why I think that there is going to be a lot of pressure from the DNC for the supers to make their decisions shortly after the final primary on June 3rd. The supers could delay the nomination simply by not endorsing either candidate.