Progress Endorses McCain

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 2, 2008 in In Brief. 2 Comments

Predictably, the DP endorsed John McCain for president, claiming that Obama would make the country socialist and vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Reasonable selection, but the fear mongering is shameful.  #

2 Responses to “Progress Endorses McCain”

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  • Waldo Jaquith says:
    November 2, 2008 at 11:53 am

    For all his good qualities, Mr. Obama is the most liberal presidential candidate from a major party that this country perhaps has ever seen.

    Really? FactCheck.org says “his career voting record is far from ‘most liberal.'” Try LBJ (The Great Society?) or FDR (The New Deal?) Obama? Not hardly. The misrepresentation of how liberal that Democratic candidates are is a distortion that reliably takes place every four years, each time using The National Journal’s rankings. They’ve lamented how badly they’re misinterpreted, with their editor writing this note to readers four years ago:

    “[O]ur magazine — or, more precisely, our annual congressional vote ratings edition — has become a Republican talking point in the 2004 presidential campaign. And that’s been a fascinating, and disconcerting, experience. Fascinating because we’re more used to being cited in congressional hearings than on the Today show. Disconcerting because the shorthand used to describe our ratings of Kerry and Edwards is sometimes misleading — or just plain wrong.”

    Here are some key points from The National Journal’s Q&A about this year’s ranking:

    Q: Does Obama’s rating mean that he’s the most liberal senator?

    A: The rating is just for his votes in 2007. For his votes in 2006, he was ranked the 10th-most-liberal senator. For his votes in 2005, he was ranked the 16th-most-liberal senator.

    Q: How often did Obama vote the liberal position in 2007?
    A: He participated in 66 of the 99 votes used for the ratings. He voted the liberal position 65 times.

    Q: Aren’t the labels “liberal” and “conservative” open to interpretation?
    A: Yes. On some matters, most people would agree on what constitutes a liberal position or a conservative position. On other matters, it’s not as clear-cut. Some critics of the war in Iraq, for instance, argue that opposition to the war is a conservative position because it reflects a belief in limited government involvement in international affairs. But in National Journal’s ratings, votes in opposition to the war are categorized as liberal. Labels such as “liberal” and “conservative” are just that — labels. They are subject to debate. But as long as National Journal thinks there’s a broad consensus about what these labels mean, we’ll continue using them in our vote ratings.

    Q: You keep referring to Obama and Clinton. What about John McCain?
    A: He didn’t get a composite score for 2007 because he missed too many votes.

  • HollowBoy says:
    November 2, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    A lot of you weren’t around then, but what is being said about Obama is almost word for word what was said about Democratic nominee Senator George McGovern in 1972. He was called a dangerous radical who would destroy America if he was elected.
    Fearmongering like that helped result in a Nixon landslide.
    But it looks like the result will be quite different this time. It may not be like 1964,1972, or 1984 in terms of a landslide. But may well be like Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980 when the Democrats could not hold on to many of the states they captured in 1976.

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