Where Do They Stand? (NYT Op-Chart on Candidates)

[struggle4progress]

By SARAH BINDER, THOMAS MANN, ALAN MURPHY and PAUL SAHRE
Published: July 26, 2004

<snip>
So where do the Democratic nominees really fit along the left-right spectrum? ... we have arrayed Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards from left to right in the above figure based on their voting history in the Senate. For comparison's sake, we also have included Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, John McCain of Arizona, and the parties' median senators. We even have scores for President Bush (from his announced positions on roll call votes while president) and Vice President Dick Cheney (based on the votes he cast when he represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives from 1979 through 1988).

Assertions that the Democrats' presumptive nominees are extreme liberals fall flat. True, Mr. Kerry's voting history places him to the left of today's median Senate Democrat (Tom Daschle of South Dakota). But he is closer to the center of the Democratic Party than he is to the most liberal senators, including Mr. Kennedy. John Edwards falls just to the right of the median Democrat. In fact, he is nearly indistinguishable from Mr. Lieberman, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 2000.

On the other side of the partisan divide, Mr. Bush - like Mr. Kerry - is more extreme than his party's median senator (Richard Shelby of Alabama). He is also noticeably more conservative than his primary challenger in 2000, John McCain. So any assertion that the Democratic candidates are out of the mainstream might easily be applied to the Republicans as well. In fact, if any of the four candidates on the national party tickets this year is out of the mainstream, it is Mr. Cheney, who in his last full term in the House was on the right flank of roughly 90 percent of his Republican colleagues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/opinion/26mann.html?th



Source: Ideological positions calculated by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, see "Common Space Data," http://voteview.uh.edu/readmeb.htm.

[lapfog_1]

1. The BIG difference

is that "libural" Ted Kennedy is a member of the minority party in
the Senate, whereas Dick Cheney is a flat brain wave away from being
President (and given the current pResident may, in fact, have a
flat brain wave...).

Besides, it's my belief that most people, when actually PRESENTED
with legislation, are somewhere near John Edwards, not the mythical
"Moderate" center. In other words, remove the hard right media,
the personality attacks and fear mongering, and just talk about
issues and legislation, more people are moderate democrats than
anywhere else on the political spectrum.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. Edwards is where most people are.