Kerry's liberal credentials

[tinanator]

maybe this piece has already been discussed?
http://www.progressive.org/may04/conn0504.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. hmmm interesting

too bad it's not on the editorial page of the NYT

that's ok tho, good to know that he has a fairly moderate record he can trot out when he needs it

what struck me most about the article was this snippet

In a cover story entitled "What's Right with Kerry," in The Nation, David Corn recently declared "what distinguishes Kerry's career are key moments when he displayed guts and took tough actions that few colleagues would imitate."

Those moments, which Corn catalogs, mostly took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s: the Iran-Contra hearings, inquiries into the Reagan Administration's coddling of drug dealers, and the BCCI investigation that linked members of both parties to a bank supporting a network of criminals and terrorists. One of his last courageous stands was in 1996, when he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which even Wellstone voted for.

shows he still has courage to stand up for his convictions

[wyldwolf]

2. what Ruth Conniff says vs. what the ADA actually says

I'm not sure what point she is trying to make here. Is she saying Kerry isn't really liberal or isn't really the MOST liberal?

She also relies mostly on the Brookings Institution's ratings (as did the rightwing) for making the claim that Kerry is "the MOST liberal.")

A better judge is the ADA. For more than 30 years, the standard method for gauging ideology has been to use the annual ratings of lawmakers' votes by various interest groups, notably the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)...

The ADA, which describes itself as "the nation's oldest independent liberal organization," was founded in 1947 by a group of distinguished postwar liberals -- including Eleanor Roosevelt, labor leader Walter Reuther and historian Arthur Schlesinger -- to rally support for progressive causes...

I don't have time to check every "fact" Ruth Conniff wrote in this piece. However, something immediately seemed off...

From here piece:

Nor does Kerry make the ADA's lifetime top-ten list of Senate liberals, headed by the late Paul Wellstone at number one.

Here is the ADA's Lifetime ADA Voting Ratings for Kerry and several other senators and congressmen who were in the presidential race:

Sen. John Kerry...........92

Rep. Dennis Kucinich......86

Sen. John Edwards.........85

Sen. Joseph Lieberman.....78

http://www.adaction.org/Campaign2004/VotingHistory/votinghistory.html

Interesting, huh? A little contradictory, too. By the association that Ruth Conniff quotes from, (which is one of the most respected progressive organizations in this country), Kerry has a more liberal lifetime record than Kucinich.

[no name no slogan]

3. I posted this a while back...

But it still needs to be discussed, IMHO. I hope the John Kerry I vote for in November will be the John Kerry from 1991, who had no problem standing up to Bush's dirty little Iraq War.