×
I don't know if this helps or hurts his campaign, but the new National Journal rankings are out, and Barack Obama is the #1 most liberal Senator in America. These ratings, of course, are a bit skewed in presidential years, as candidates on the trail only come back for high profile votes, and if you're running as a liberal, you cast the lefty vote on all those issues. During his first two years in the Senate, he ranked 16th and 10th. This all gives me an opportunity to link to my friend Chris Hayes' endorsement of Barack Obama. Chris is one of the most sincere, brilliant progressives I know, and the case he makes is, I think, the best possible case that could be made for Obama. It should be read. And if anyone has seen what they consider the world's best case for Clinton, let me know and I'll put that up.Update: Commenter dk notes:
You might want to take a look behind the numbers. Apparently the rankings were decided by looking at 99 senate votes last year. Of those votes, Barak did not vote on 33 of them (compared to Hillary not voting on 17 of them).As for the votes they did cast, Hillary voted the "wrong" way 5 times, while Barak voted the "wrong" way once. Of the five times Hillary voted "wrong," one of those times Obama voted the same way, and two of those times (yes, this included Kyl-Lieberman), Obama didn't vote.I know that all of this actual data will be ignored as each partisan tries to spin the overall results...but it matters to me so I figured I'd share what I found.The rankings are, as dk notes, methodologically unsound, and particularly for presidential candidates. Kerry was also the most liberal Senator when he was running for president. But it's interesting to see where Clinton and Obama diverged. On 18/S1, "Establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators," Obama voted for, and Clinton voted against. On HR6, "Create a national action plan for reducing oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030," Clinton voted "yes," Obama didn't vote. On S1348, "Allow certain immigrants to stay in the United States while renewing their visas," Clinton voted no, Obama voted yes. And on Kyl-Lieberman, as dk points out, Obama didn't vote.
