Liberal never was a bad word.

We desperately need a Liberal in The WH!!! The whole goddammed world is waiting for this to happen!!

And besides, after the havoc the Republicans have wreaked on our country and around the world the past seven years, being called a Liberal isn’t a bad thing

seven years? might i suggest that your math is a bit off. we have been under the market fundamentalist's economic experiment since reagan. reagan , bush 1, clinton, bush 2--pretty much the same economic ideology. and look at where we are, the financialization of the economy, teetering on the edge, held-up by foreign central banks.

being called a Liberal isn’t a bad thing

gah, you don't say... not only is being "called a liberal" not a bad thing, actually being one is not only not bad, it is on the contrary a good thing.

Well at least he's not the #1 Bathroom Stall Senator or the #1 Prostitute Customer Senator...

Not that our side shouldn't shout it from the mountaintops, but these assholes did the same thing to Kerry in '04.

Wait a second...
Maybe one of the main votes considered was the Iran Republican Guard Corps as a Terrorist Orginization, That doesn't sound very liberal.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/10/07/clintons_iran_vote_prompts_a_h.html

Wasnt Kerry the "most liberal" in 2004? What are the metrics here? "He's the democratic candidate? Check. Ok, he's the most liberal."

So it's clear that this list is bogus, it was drafted by right-wing hacks and Obama isn't, in fact, the most liberal Senator.

Still, I've heard Hillary supporters quoting this list as a reason not to support him.

It's sad when some Dems embrace right-wing propaganda and smear, just because it suits their political ambitions.

And when John Kerry was running for president, the reich-wingers were claiming he was the "most liberal senator".

Loved seeing John for the first time on MSNBC last night -appreciated his balanced analysis! He was fair to Clinton and Obama.
And relates to exactly why I'm with Obama - Obama is generous in his admiration and truthiness towards the acomplishments of others - compared to the Clintons, whose self indulgence is getting sickening.

Obama has to be labeled with 'something', a tag to immediately cause revulsion to those who want him out of the way.
But the sad fact is that Hillary Clinton herself, combined with Bill, together have so many negatives there's almost nothing Barack can do to knock them out of their #1 positions in any negative category.

I'm happy to see that Obama has stirred up such a sense of nationalistic pride that the people of this country are fervently exercising their duties as citizens to fight against -and are on the verge of winning- the political machines that have run their lives into the dirt for so long -regardless of party.

This is of course fodder for the conservative base and the offering of a tool for the usual suspects in the media to use.

I can imagine this might be the first step in a strategic campaign but as I think about it its so weird and stupid as to be quite possible! Set up Obama as a bigger "threat" than Clinton to "scare" some 'Independents' from Obama to Clinton. Clinton becomes the nominee and then its on to the old standbys of Lewinsky/Foster/Willey's Cat and the new one about the Kazakh mining deal ( where apparently Bill helped in a business deal which netted him $130 million for his foundation etc---but only netted the businessman a mining contract worth quote tens of millions unquote, which is not how such deals usually work!).
The Right Wing can't attack Obama's marriage and they can't attack him personally and directly for being black. The Madrassa crap isn't doesn;t fly beyond the bigoted base, so that's no use in the general arena (they tried and failed on that one).

Yeah this is all really stupid but kind of plausible. We''l have to see.

They claim that Obama and Clinton only differed on 10 votes, but somehow Obama comes in first and Clinton is #16. Fuzzy math, I tell ya.

As an Edwards supporter this is one of the dilemmas in trying to decide between Hillary and Obama because their voting records are almost identical.

Obamamaniacs came on to these threads touting Senator Fiengolds criticism of Edwards for voting for the Patriot act, but the vote was in 2001 and the entire body of Dems in the senate voted for the Patriot Act en mass, except Feingold... he was the sole vote against it. This included Ted Kennedy who voted for the Patriot Act in that same vote.

Feingold also failed to mention that Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot act later when he voted against it again.

So there are a lot of organizations and people trying to make false statements about Hillary and Obama's voting record out there... truth is they are as I stated almost identical. Further... Obama wasn't in the Senate when the ATUMF was voted on and no one knows what pressure party leadership was exerting on the Senators at that time. So the notion that he was "right the first time" is a bit moot too.

Next they're going to say that in his youth, Obama was a liberteen (sic) (and sick).

Oh C&L ...!

Don't you know that *whoever* the RNC believes to be the leading DEM candidate is, by definition, the "most liberal?" I remember chuckling in 2004 when I read that John Kerry was THE most liberal senator at the time ... "further left than even TED KENNEDY!"

Or so the bold type informed me.

Perhaps they're using "the math".

Marge @ 4:

Hard to tell how they could rank him at all, since if you go to the congressional record you see he DOESN'T vote, more than he DOES vote....go check it out....

And when he was in the state senate HE says he made a mistake and kept hitting the wrong button. Darn you'd think after a couple of years he might get it correct.

Total Hillbot double standard.

Well, National Journal seems to have succeeded in its goal: write something that makes people talk about National Journal.

MoveOn.org with 3.2 million members nationwide and over 1.7 million members in states that vote next Tuesday have come out in support of Senator Obama.

Press Release - MoveOn.org Endorses Senator Barack Obama for President.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing

"The truth is an offense, but not a sin" ~ Bob Marley

Marge @ 4:

Hard to tell how they could rank him at all, since if you go to the congressional record you see he DOESN'T vote, more than he DOES vote....go check it out....

And when he was in the state senate HE says he made a mistake and kept hitting the wrong button. Darn you'd think after a couple of years he might get it correct.

OMG! HAHAHAHAHAHA
What a dumbass.

Ali @ 24:

Logan, why is the first paragraph trying to defend him by saying he's not that liberal? Really, your second paragraph is the important part.

I'd be waving this survey all over the internets if I were running Obama's campaign. The repubs calling someone "liberal" can only help him IMO. It's time for some liberalism in this fundamentalist, ass-backward country.

I was merely pointing out that their math didn't add up.

Liberal means our citizens, our cities, our rights, our children, our land are protected by we the people and not some runamuck, backward (meaning of conservative), runaway WH.

Liberal means helping our citizens. Surely we can. chimpy has proved this by starting wars.

Just for the tolling repug:

If the US is "hit" by some foreign brown faction "again" Liberal mean going after the correct enemy. No pre-emptive little dicky sneak attacks either.

BTW -- all government elective officials tax, increase taxes and find thing to tax then give (social programs) "rebates." repugs tax and steal keep while dems tax and spend on its citizens and to preserve peace. dicwads.

Geez, I would be ashame if someone called me anything repug like.

How is defined "liberal" in this context.

It seems that what goes for "liberal" this days in this country is called "centrist" or "moderate conservative" elsewhere in the world.

Dr. Matt @ 28:

Dr. Matt @ 26:

Marge @ 4:

Hard to tell how they could rank him at all, since if you go to the congressional record you see he DOESN'T vote, more than he DOES vote....go check it out....

I'm not about to count them up, but it's quite clear you are wrong:
http://www.vote-smart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490

I imported his voting record into a database:

N = 75 (19.13%)
NV = 120 (30.61%)
Y = 197 (50.26%)
--------------------
Total = 392 (100.00)

You are wrong, Marge.

I still wouldn't think that a person who didn't show up 1/3 of the time to do his job to be impressive...

He may actually try to pull what Hillary did a while back, when someone called her a "liberal" she said, no sir I am a "progressive."

Seriously, and these are the two idiots who us liberals have to chose from? One of them doesn't even want to be labeled one, way to earn my liberal vote Hillary. And the other of them I am sure he will say that he is liberal in a Winston Churchill kind of liberal way, in order to not dare piss off the conservative base he so desperately wants to with the approval of.

I like how TNJ, using some complete bullshit subjective criteria, thinks they can quantify "liberalness" with precision to a tenth of a percent. That's just funny.

Pretty much explodes TNJ's "unbiased" label. Congressional Quarterly is THE unbiased source.

ummm, this isn't fuzzy math at all. We know from the graphic that there are ties. That means that vote differences don't matter. For instance, if there are 3 tied for 2nd with let's say 1 vote difference from Obama, then whomever has at least 2 votes different from Obama would be ranked 6th (not 3rd).

John @ 52:

Tyler Durden @ 47:

Dr. Matt @ 28:

Dr. Matt @ 26:

I imported his voting record into a database:

N = 75 (19.13%)
NV = 120 (30.61%)
Y = 197 (50.26%)
--------------------
Total = 392 (100.00)

You are wrong, Marge.

I still wouldn't think that a person who didn't show up 1/3 of the time to do his job to be impressive...

He may actually try to pull what Hillary did a while back, when someone called her a "liberal" she said, no sir I am a "progressive."

Seriously, and these are the two idiots who us liberals have to chose from? One of them doesn't even want to be labeled one, way to earn my liberal vote Hillary. And the other of them I am sure he will say that he is liberal in a Winston Churchill kind of liberal way, in order to not dare piss off the conservative base he so desperately wants to with the approval of.

Give the amount of Non Votes a rest!
They are both running for president and have BOTH missed over 75% of the votes since October.

So? They still collect paychecks as senators, right?

I will try to skip 1/3 of my working days telling my boss that I am concentrating on my singing career. I am sure he will be hardly impressed.

And I know McCain et al are doing it too. Same shit in my opinion.....

The best part is the very first thing that makes him liberal at the NJ rankings.

Fighting unethical behavior among Senators. From the very top of their list of pivotal votes:

18/S1 Establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators. January 18. (27-71) C-1.

Funny how that makes one a liberal! Guess the National Journal is just admitting the obvious - that conservatives should support public corruption and keeping it hidden from us rubes.

And, perhaps tellingly, Clinton voted no.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but does anyone think that the Bush Administration and the RNC might be trying to diminish the Iraq issue and raise the economy and other issues the Republicans "own" because they would rather see Clinton be the Democratic nominee in November?

If it's been said once, it's been said a hundred thousand times: Clinton would unite the Republicans against her. I don’t think that the RNC is very afraid of Hillary Clinton winning.

I do think the Republicans are more than a little worried about Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee because they feel he could beat whoever the GOP throws out there. Iraq is one of Obama's strongest issues, but the talk lately isn't about that. It's the economy and health care, which Republicans have been much stronger on, historically.

We know we can't trust the GOP to run an honest general election, so it's not surprising that they might try to throw a monkey wrench into the Democratic nominating process.

Actually Americans for Democratic Action equally rates both Hillary and Obama in 2006 with a 95% Liberal voting record.

Rusty Shackleford @ 49:

I like how TNJ, using some complete bullshit subjective criteria, thinks they can quantify "liberalness" with precision to a tenth of a percent. That's just funny.

It's the old Pravda school of propaganda, in three easy steps:

1. Make shit up that sounds good.
2. Assertively represent it as fact.
3. Robotically repeat over and over again.

Number One Liberal!?

When asked about the 'Immigration Problem', Obama insisted

'We're gonna deport them all! Each and every last one of them'.

'And if England, and Ireland, and Germany, and Whereever won't accept them, we'll ship all the Honkies to the North and South poles, where they'll blend in easier'.

#1 liberal in the senate; endorsed by MoveOn and Ted Kennedy; for drivers licenses for illegals;....

All this coming just before super tuesday. I think alot of primary voters may think twice about someone as liberal as he is being able to win a general election. Imo this last week has made him look less electable than Hillary does.

Jonesy @ 67:

#1 liberal in the senate; endorsed by MoveOn and Ted Kennedy; for drivers licenses for illegals;....

All this coming just before super tuesday. I think alot of primary voters may think twice about someone as liberal as he is being able to win a general election. Imo this last week has made him look less electable than Hillary does.

I think I know what you are saying. Obama looks less electable because he favors driver licenses for non-US citizens? Am I close to what you wrote.

Illegals, undocumented, aliens or such is so racist and very pompous to state. (IMHO)

If you refer to the website of Americans for Democratic Action, in 2005 Obama and Hillary both earned the coveted 100% Liberal Quotient and the title of Senate Heroes! For 2006 they were both down to 95%. I guess they knew the election was coming and had to moderate their positions. Just a smidge.

http://www.adaction.org/ADATodayVR2005.pdf

http://www.adaction.org/ADATodayVR2006.pdf

Albatross @ 6:

I think it's clear that he's a Liberal Muslim Terrorist Pinko Commie Hippie Flip-Flopper. And those are only the labels i can repeat in public. In the privacy of the Wingnut Blogs and Radio he's lots of other things too.

You think he's a Hippie? That's funny, And he's a terrorist?! Your analytical skills are lacking.

kangeroo @ 70:

republicans really are scary smart, guys. they know that they're gonna have to live with a dem as their next president, so between obama and hillary, they'd rather have the guy who they can paint as "liberal" (fooling us dems into voting for him)--instead of the person who'll really change the laws in a progressive way.

Hillary is all about Bush style fearmongering, war, wire tapping, and stripping people of their freedoms. I think that's who they would want in there.