The argument "my candidate is one of the most liberal members of the house/senate" is really stupid.

[Exiled in America]

Do you know that every time we have an election, no matter who the candidate is, we always have some fools who start trying to argue against every concerned raised about a candidate by saying "whatever, he/she is one of the most liberal members of the house/senate!"

This is such a total farce.

Here are just a handful of the logical failings:

1. First and foremost, these "listed as one of the most liberal members of the house/senate" always come from some private organization. No one ever asks who these people are or what the criteria is for determining what "liberal" means or even the methodology used in calculating the information. Half the time, the information comes from right wing sources and the label is not intended to be a compliment. When it isn't coming from right-wing sources, there is still no clear explanation for how these ambiguous claims were reached or what they mean.

2. Second, "look at his/her liberal voting record?" Common people. It's not just about what gets to the house or senate floor for a vote - its what truly "liberal" or "progressive" bills never make it to floor at all because they don't have the support of so-called "most liberal members of the house/senate"

3. The important thing missing from this "polls" done by independent and private organizations who don't give you any information about how the define their terms is any look at what kind of legislation the congress person or senator in question introduced or co-sponsored. That is one of the most important things out there. It is WAY more important that just a person's vote. There is way too much political maneuvering in someone's basic voting record. Someone can vote liberal at times when it isn't difficult and doesn't matter. Bills that the public isn't paying attention to that aren't highly controversial are easy to vote for. But its not so easy to vote no on something like the Iraq War Resolution, or NAFTA or CAFTA, or the Banking Bill or the Patriot Act, or federal budgets that writing in massive subsidies to big business, or bills that codify tax breaks to corporations, etc.

It isn't the twenty easy "liberal" votes that matter. It's whether or not the candidate voted "liberal" when it was difficult or might have cost him/her but was the RIGHT thing to do.

When you look at these "liberal voting records" you see a long list of bills that are nothing but the most obvious and non-controversial votes. Of course a democratic congress person or senator is going to vote no on bills attacking abortion. That's important for sure, but its not exactly "liberal." Liberal would be introducing legislation that mandated a federal living wage, for example. Now that's liberal.

4. Are all "votes" classified as "liberal" or "not-liberal" with the same weight? If so, the classification of some candidate has having a "liberal" voting record doesn't mean much. Again this goes back to the thing where there are many bills classified by these kinds of organizations as "liberal" that are not really significant or controversial in any way. The real measure of a candidate is when a bill is absolutely right but faces strong opposition from the other party and/or pertains to an issue where taking a stand might be politically risky. That's when you get to see what a candidate is made of.

[TwilightGardener]

1. You make a good point--voting records certainly don't tell the whole story.

I take Ben Nelson as an example--he's pretty far to the right as Dems go, but when it matters, his vote really makes the difference for us--it's pretty rare for him to take the Repub stance on a hotly-contested, high-profile issue (like he unfortunately did with FISA and Cheney's Office funding--grrr). MOST of the time, he's useful to us, and the rest of the time, you have to turn a blind eye to his forays to the right because he won't get re-elected otherwise here in Nebraska. I don't really like the guy much for other reasons, but I accept that he can't be a champion of liberal values. Unfair to compare him to Kennedy or Feingold.