it's official--kerry the most liberal in u.s. senate

[AR182]

NUMBER ONE: KERRY RANKED 'MOST LIBERAL' IN SENATE ROLL CALL VOTES, TOPS KENNEDY, CLINTON

NATIONAL JOURNAL on Friday claimed Democrat frontrunner John Kerry has the "most liberal" voting record in the Senate.

The results of Senate vote ratings show that Kerry was the most liberal senator in 2003, with a composite liberal score of 96.5 -- far ahead of such Democrat stalwarts as Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

NATIONAL JOURNAL's scores, which have been compiled each year since 1981, are based on lawmakers' votes in three areas: economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy.

"To be sure, Kerry's ranking as the No. 1 Senate liberal in 2003 -- and his earning of similar honors three times during his first term, from 1985 to 1990 -- will probably have opposition researchers licking their chops," NATIONAL JOURNAL reports.

Developing...

[The ratings system was first devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator at CNN, and a contributing editor to National Journal, who continues to guide the calculation process. Data processing and statistical analysis were performed by Information Technology Services of the Brookings Institution. A panel of National Journal editors and reporters initially compiled a list of 140 key congressional roll-call votes for 2003 -- 63 votes for the Senate and 77 for the House -- and classified them as relating to economic, social, or foreign policy. Roll-call data was drawn from the Congressional Record.]

 

[Nosigar]

:scared

 

[Terryray]

still, some lefties think he's too moderate

still, some lefties think he's too moderate

part of a recent column by Alexander Cockburn that was run in Wall St Jrnl (He is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch):




Kerry reminds me of no one so much as Mr. Facing-Both-Ways, in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."

Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, and in his first term he ventured onto some interesting and politically perilous terrain, with hearings into the scandal-ridden CIA-linked bank BCCI, and into the arms-for-cocaine Contra scandals in Central America. In the end he lost his nerve, and the hearings ultimately floundered to an inconclusive close. It was the last spark of vigor in a senatorial career of singular blandness and timidity.

Already in the 1980s this supposed Massachusetts liberal (always an oversold species) supported the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act, a dagger in the heart of social programs. Kerry later renewed his commitment to the war on the poor by backing Clinton's onslaught on aid to poor mothers and their children, and more recently still, voting for the Bush tax cuts. In the Clinton years, Kerry positioned himself as one questioning the efficacy of affirmative action.

With the first Gulf war at the start of the 1990s, Kerry changed positions so rapidly his staff grew dizzy with the effort of keeping up with their boss's gyrations. He finally voted against authorizing the war but almost immediately issued a press release supporting the invasion. The 2003 war found Kerry voting with the Bush administration, only to cast himself in the early primary season as an opponent.

Kerry voted for Clinton's crime bill and for Clinton's Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which set the template for Bush's Patriot Act, which Kerry also voted for.

Kerry had indulged himself in some dutiful populist rhetoric against Big Oil, the drug companies, the HMOs and "the influence peddlers. Given his overall record, these burbles are not to be taken seriously, as anything beyond campaign small-arms fire countering the occasional populist talk of John Edwards, his sometime rival on the primary trail.

Most Democrats consider Kerry's record as irrelevant and view those with the bad taste to excavate it as active subverters of a righteous cause. But Karl Rove, Bush's political commissar, will not be so polite.