Yesterday, while exploring whether a center-left presidential candidate can win with a progressive policy agenda, the NYT noted:
To achieve the change the country wants, [Obama] says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.” But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year? […]
“When you’re rated by National Journal as to the left of Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders, that’s going to be difficult to explain,” said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
And that came shortly after James Dobson issued an alert to his religious right membership:
Sen. Obama was recently named the most liberal U.S. Senator, based on the annual voting analysis by the non-partisan and highly respected National Journal. If he emerges as the Democratic nominee, one of the critical jobs of Focus Action will be to uncover the real Barack Obama — not the feel-good orator who speaks of “change” and “hope,” but the man who would be the most left-wing president in our nation’s history.
And that came shortly after Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s pollster and strategist, repeated the right’s talking point.
“Independent and Republican support is diminishing as they find out he’s the most liberal Democratic senator.”
I’d hoped previous efforts to highlight how foolish this might have had an effect, but it appears some highly misleading talking points are harder to knock down than others.
Media Matters’ take was especially helpful.
As Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, among the votes Obama took that purportedly earned him the Journal‘s “most liberal senator” label were those to implement the 9-11 Commission’s homeland security recommendations, provide more children with health insurance, expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and maintain a federal minimum wage.
Obama himself criticized the Journal‘s methodology by noting that it considered “liberal” his vote for “an office of public integrity that stood outside of the Senate, and outside of Congress, to make sure that you’ve got an impartial eye on ethics problems inside of Congress.”
Media Matters has also previously noted that the Journal admitted to having used flawed methodology in the publication’s previous rating of then-Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. John Kerry (MA) as the “most liberal senator” in 2003.
This really isn’t complicated. National Journal argues that some senators weren’t given scores if they missed too many votes. Obama missed a full third of the 99 votes used for the ratings, but that wasn’t enough to disqualify him from the rankings. Why not? Because National Journal’s arbitrary standards, known only to the publication’s editors, say so.
National Journal argues that Obama took the “liberal” approach on 65 out of 66 key votes. There were other senators who cast more liberal votes on more liberal bills, and senators who voted the party line more often than Obama, but that doesn’t matter. Why? Because National Journal’s arbitrary standards, known only to the publication’s editors, say so.
When considering votes, the labels themselves are arbitrary.
Why is, for example, requiring 100% inspections of shipping containers for national security threats a “liberal” position? How is establishing English as the official language a “conservative” position? Is a position “conservative” or “liberal” for cutting subsidies to private business to offer student loans? This study says it is “liberal” to do so, although that position is practically of no difference from Ron Paul’s!
Any rankings system that insists, right off the bat, that Joe Biden is more liberal than Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders is automatically suspect, but the closer one looks at the process, the more flawed it appears. That National Journal is willing to acknowledge that its John Kerry ranking in 2004 was bogus is hardly reassuring — if the magazine was wrong then, perhaps it’s not quite reliable now?
I still think Brian Beutler’s observation is the right one: “[T]his is philistinism masquerading as social science — it’s the U.S. News College Guide of Washington politics. Journalists ought to understand that. And those of conscience ought to ignore it, or lay it bare, but certainly not feed into it.”
That was true when Brian said it in January, and the rankings look no better now.