Michael Tomasky sorts out how liberal the dem senators are

[whometense]

You could disagree with his method, but I found the article interesting. The point is to explore how a Lieberman loss would affect the senate's balance.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11794

...So here, to me, is how it shakes out. Of the 44, I call 16 Liberals, 14 Moderates, and 14 Tweeners. Obviously, some of this is subjective, so for the sake of transparency, and so everyone can pick me apart, here’s my breakdown (deviating from style and using last names only, for the sake of speed):

Liberals: Kennedy, Reed, Boxer, Sarbanes, Lautenberg, Harkin, Durbin, Kerry, Mikulski, Levin, Leahy, Feingold, Dayton, Dodd, Wyden, and Murray (barely, but she’s an 81.3 and is best known, to me at least, for pushing Plan B).

Tweeners: Biden, Clinton, Rockefeller, Akaka, Kohl, Reid, Schumer, Cantwell, Menendez, Feinstein, Dorgan, Byrd, Stabenow (high-ish score of 86.3, but affiliated with the DLC), and Obama (82.5, but has challenged some liberal orthodoxies in a high-profile way, e.g. his recent religion speech, and he voted for the tort “reform” bill, which can fairly be called a significant vote).

Moderates: Carper, Bayh, Inouye (surprisingly low 69.5), Lincoln, both Nelsons, Bingaman, Baucus, Salazar, Pryor, Conrad, Landrieu, Johnson, and Lieberman...

[ProSense]

1. Interesting!

A number of tweeners are now being exalted by the netroots.

[Dr Ron]

3. The netroots doesn't pay much attention to actual ideology

So often the "netroots" backs people based upon their style rather than their actual positions.

[Dr Ron]

2. Flawed but ok assessment

Categorizing people based on the voting scores has its flaws but there are a couple of good points here. They do list Kerry as a liberal, as should be done. Due to the limitations of the National Journal's scores I agree with having the Tweener group rather than dividing everone as either liberal or moderate.

Interesting that affiliation with the DLC is enough to rank Stabenow as a tweener. Maybe its correct about her, but it would be fairer to say this based upon specific positions she holds as opposed to simple affiliation with the DLC. If you include everyone ever associated with the DLC there is a broad range there.