Today's dispatch from HillaryHUB included this bit on Obama's "present" votes in the Illinois State Senate, drawn from her speech yesterday:
Now, there's been a lot of talk about yes or no answers to complex questions. But most people don't know that for legislators who don't want to take a stand, there's a third way to vote. Not yes, not no, but ‘present' – which is kind of like voting ‘maybe.' Well, in the Illinois State Senate, on issue after issue, my opponent voted ‘present,' instead of yes or no. […] A president can't vote ‘present.' A president can't pick and choose which challenges he or she will face.
This isn't really new; it's a recycled Republican talking point. In the state senate, Obama voted "present" on several abortion bills, a bill regarding firearms in a school zone, and one on concealed weapons. Obama says that on the abortion-related votes, he worked out an arrangement with abortion-rights advocates to get Democrats to vote "present" on bills if they feared a "no" would endanger their re-election. It seems like a cop-out, to be sure, but even the presidents of Illinois Planned Parenthood Council and the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence backed his decisions to vote present. But those points are pretty much moot, since in Illinois voting "present" is essentially the same as voting "no" – without having to go on the record as voting "no." The Obama campaign has already fired back on their "Fact Check" site.
Unfortunately, voting "present" is fairly common in where it's allowed, like Illinois and the U.S. House of Representatives, where representatives do this on contentious issues regularly if voting against it will draw a lot of negative attention. Where it isn't allowed, like the U.S. Senate, representatives just choose not to show up for the vote. Clinton's missed plenty of votes in her tenure in the Senate, including 18.4 percent of the total during the current session of Congress. Obama's doing worse, missing 139 votes, or 33.7 percent of the total. The frequent absences this Congress can likely be attributed to the campaign, but going back a few sessions, there are still missed votes.
Going after Obama on the "present" votes, especially in places where his vote was advised by progressive advocates, is stooping pretty low for the Clinton campaign. Senators just skip the votes they don't want to make, and while it's impossible to determine their reasons for missing votes, Hillary's skipped plenty.
--Kate Sheppard
