2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What if Bernie were Bernice? [View all]karynnj
(59,498 posts)Was more liberal. He had the best lifetime record of any Senator on the environment. I know HRC got the endorsement of LCV as Kerry did, but his record on all issues related to the environment was better.
He voted against DOMA and volunteered to testify before Strom Thurmond ' s committee to push to allow gas to serve in the military in the 1990s when that was controversial. He had a 100 percent record with HRC, a group that measures hay rights support.
His support on women 's issues was 100 percent, I believe he voted against a few amendments that would have limited abortion rights that Clinton supported. Kerry and Olympia Snowe passed many Small Business bills which empowered women.
Kerry voted against every bad bankruptcy bill, while Clinton voted for the 2001 version. Kerry investigated BCCI and was instrumental in getting it closed. He also was on the banking committee and worked to correct the S&L problems with others like Senator Heinz.
Kerry and Kennedy jointly wrote the precursor bill To SCHIP which was modified to get Republican support by Kennedy and Hatch.
Clinton is more hawkish than Kerry, where his IWR vote was an aeration - hers wasn't. Note Kerry voted for Kerry/Finegold while she voted against it and was angry that he wrote the legislation. The Clintons supported Gulf War one, which Kerry voted against. Not to mention, Kerry investigated the Contras being illegally armed, while the Clintons, like many Democrats were for supporting the Contras.
More recently, she was for Kyl/Lieberman which Kerry led the fight against and, while Kerry pushed Obama to work on the Iran deal, she was skeptical.