True or False: "Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate"?

[Mister Ed]

Liberals and conservatives alike wish this oft-repeated right-wing talking point were true, but I don't believe it is. Can anyone give me a reliable source to verify the ranking of legislators' voting records? It would help me out with a tiny skirmish in the ongoing Water Cooler Wars.

Many thanks,
Mister Ed

[glowing]

1. Hmm.. FISA bill.. We lost a bill of right on that one.. should make all

good Amerkins proud.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. He voted for FISA after stating he wouldn't and that he would filibuster the bill and he didn't.

Has the term, "liberal", been diluted?

[liberal N proud]

3. Because he is running for President the right wing will sell that as true

They will pin any Congress critter running against them as the most liberal member of Congress.
And their stupid ass followers will believe and repeat.

[Cid_B]

4. Most of the time...

... I hear this stated they refer to this study...


http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/

[dems_rightnow]

5. This is an interesting one.

CQ.com logged all the votes, and measured who voted with the party in this sortable database. Interestingly, Lieberman voted with the Democrats 87% of the time, placing him higher in that area than.... Evan Bayh.

Anyway, it shows Obama at 96% on "party unity", Not the highest, but close.


http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=142

[LWolf]

13. Party unity does not equal liberal.

The Democratic Party is not a liberal party. It has a liberal wing, of course, but voting with the majority is not automatically a "liberal" vote.

[Tyler Durden]

6. According to the Congressional Quaterly...

And parsing their figures, I'd say Sherrod Brown of Ohio with 97% Party Support and the second lowest support for Bush at 24% tops the list.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=142

[LWolf]

16. Boxer has 98%.

As does Lautenberg and Reed. Durbin, Kennedy, Leahy, and Whitehouse all have 97%.

I don't equate Democratic Party "unity" as "liberal," since many Democrats are not liberal, but by this measure, Obama is tied for 8th place along with Akaka, Clinton, Dodd, Harkin, Kerry, Levin, and Mikulski.

[Tyler Durden]

25. And she has 47% support of the president.

Brown comes in at 24%.

Had to use something as a ruler.

[LWolf]

26. The best ruler

would first decide what constitutes "liberal," and then measure against that.

I doubt that the U.S. will reach consensus of what it is to be "liberal," lol.

[bunkerbuster1]

7. It's crap, easily disproved.

If some winger decides to cite the stupid, rigged-up-the-wazoo National Journal metric, ask them right back if they seriously believe he's more liberal than Bernie Freaking Sanders.

good takedown from Salon:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/01/31/obama_record/index.html

[Mister Ed]

11. Thank you, that's exactly what I needed

The Salon article notes that even though Obama and Clinton have near-identical voting records, the National Journal study that the neocons love to quote ranked Obama as the number-one lefty and Clinton only sixteenth. Had Clinton won the nomination, it's an easy guess that the National Journal would declare that she had the most liberal voting record in the Senate.

The other posters make good points too. C'mon, more liberal than Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders?

Many thanks to you all for your input. The background on this is that I have a neighbor who forwarded one of those Obama-smear email cain letters to the whole neighborhood. It was the one that claims Obama is going to raise taxes so high we'll be forced out of our homes if he's elected. It was easy to swat that one down with the help of Snopes.com and Factcheck.org. His email reply cast doubt on the findings of Snopes and Factcheck, and said the smear's claims were certainly believable because, after all, "Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate". I didn't want him to get away with that one either.

[bunkerbuster1]

12. I've dealt with these fools before. They're reduced to calling Snopes "left wing"

since truth tends to have a liberal bias.

[baldguy]

8. Four yrs ago JOHN KERRY had "most liberal voting record in the Senate".

[Jim__]

9. That's according to the National Journal.

here

However, they don't count all votes - they select the votes that count. And, they assign weights to the votes. Using that technique, I can make anybody, anything I want. Of course, the MSM doesn't question the "integrity" of the National Journal.

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Compared to Bernie Sanders?

I find that exceedingly hard to swallow. I say, "False."

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

20. Yep. Sanders.

And probably 6-10 others.

[LWolf]

14. False.

Obama is not a liberal.

As far as his voting record goes, compare him to a liberal, and he won't be at the top. Try Sanders.

[TexasObserver]

15. False. That's a GOP meme used every election.

Whoever they want to malign is always "the most liberal member of the senate!"

[Vickers]

17. "oft-repeated right-wing talking point"

Irony alert.

[caledesi]

24. Well said! NT

[Bill McBlueState]

18. some previous posters are onto something

If someone makes a claim about Obama's voting record, it's his job to back it up. It's not your job to shoot it down.

You could say, "Convince me that Obama is more liberal than Bernie Sanders." Keep the burden of proof on the person making the claim.

[seabeyond]

19. they said it about gore, then kerry, then obama. none of them were. they lie. n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. It's bullshit

Hillary has a more liberal voting record. Most vote rating scales rate Durbin as the most liberal.

[spanone]

22. i wish he did....

[seasat]

23. Here's a good site with a rigid statistical approach to ranking

I like the way this professor ranks them. It seems to be closer to reality than simply picking a few votes. Obama was the tenth most liberal senator in the 110 congress and 21st most liberal in the 109th congress. In contrast, McCain was 94th in the 110th and 100th in liberal ranking for the 109th.

My problem with some of the other sites is that that they base it on a few votes that they determine to be liberal or conservative. The result is that if a senator misses a few votes but votes with their party on the other issues, they can be skewed as more liberal or conservative. Dr. Poole looks at all the rankings and ends up with folks like Feingold, Dodd, and Sanders as top liberals with Inhofe, Coburn, and Demint as most conservative. Those rankings seem more realistic to me based on what I know about those folks.