Is the National Journal Trying to Tar Obama With a Liberal Brush?

The National Journal released its annual ranking of how liberal or conservative Senators are on Thursday, January 31, 2008. Interestingly Obama was ranked the most "liberal" Senator and Clinton was ranked the 16th most liberal. In 2004, the National Journal ranked John Kerry the most liberal Senator, and also ranked John Edwards as pretty liberal also.

Now, in the 2006 rankings Obama had a liberal score of 86 and Clinton had a liberal score of 70.2. Those scores meant that Obama was ranked 10th most liberal and Clinton was ranked 32nd most liberal. In 2007, however, Obama moves up to number one and Clinton moves up to number 16. Quite a jump.

So how does the National Journal come up with this ranking system? Well, the National Journal doesn't base its ranking on every vote. According to the Journal the rankings are based on what it calls 99 key votes.

If you look at the supposed "key votes" you find that 26 of them are proposals to limit debate on various bills, and seven of them are proposals to table various bills. Thus, a third of the votes aren't votes on legislation at all. Further, the list is inherently subjective. An example is the very first vote listed, which was a proposal to set up an Office of Public Integrity. Apparently, according to the Journal, if you are in favor of enforcing ethics laws against Senators, you are a liberal.

Now, how did the National Journal get into the ranking business? Well, it was a brainchild of Bill Schneider, who is a political commentator on CNN. This is how the Journal explains Schneider's work on these rankings:

The ratings system -- devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal -- also assigns "composite" scores, an average of the members' issue-based scores. In 2007, Obama's composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden, D-Del., with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., with a 92.8.

So where does Bill Schneider come from? Well, among other things, he is described by Wikipedia as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI is then described by Wikipedia in the following language:

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. It is associated with neoconservative domestic and foreign policy views.[1][2][3] According to the institute its mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate."[4] AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy.[5] More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions.

So basically what we have is a ranking system devised by a conservative which is used by a supposed "non-partisan" media company to produce rankings that are used every four years to tar Democratic presidential nominees with a "liberal" brush. To make it even more interesting, the system is based on a very subjective set of votes with the liberal-conservative position subjectively set by the National Journal.

The ranking system is then released to the public and picked up the media with little or no explanation of what the rankings represent or how they were determined. Yep, sounds real objective to us.

If You Hate Government, You Shouldn't Run It

Now that is a simple and easy to understand slogan. It makes sense because a person who hates something and then tries to run it will do a bad job. It is true and the truth has been borne out by the Bushies' incompetence in Iraq, with Hurricane Katrina, with the fiscal operations of the Federal government, and with the actual running of the government itself.

The Bushies didn't look upon government service as "service" but as "employment", a place where they could make some money, pick up lines for their resumes, and fight the conservative battle against the evils of "big government." Of course, their conservative values didn't stop from trying to make a buck at the taxpayer's expense.

They were, of course, inherently bad at actually running the government. It is one thing to rant about liberals in some college or law school classroom or over beers at a local watering hole, it is a whole other thing to actually run a government. Time after time their conduct in office has been shown to be incompetent, venal, corrupt, and devoid of any new ideas.

It is not enough, though, to just enjoy the train wreck they are making of the conservative movement. Progressives need a slogan to drive home to the American people why these idiots shouldn't be put in charge of future governments. That's why we are submitting the slogan that "if you hate government, you shouldn't run it."

Are There Liberal and Conservative Brains?

The L.A. Times posted a story on its website dated Monday, September 10, 2007, about a research study that supposedly proves that liberals and conservatives process information differently. There have been studies that show that liberals and conservatives think differently, but this study goes beyond those studies and explores the processing of information. Here is a quote from the article:

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a flip-flopper for changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

"There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.

If this research study is accurate, then the question becomes whether how such brains are distributed across the United States population. That is, are there more "conservative brains" or more "liberal brains"? Are there differences in where such brains are located? Do people with "liberal" brains tend to live in areas where there is more change? It will be interesting to see how this information develops over the next few years.

UPDATE: Here is an article on the same study that gives more background on how liberals and conservatives differ in their cognitive styles.

Conservatives Read Less Books Than Liberals

According to this article 34% of conservatives as opposed to 22% of liberals and moderates haven't read a book during the past year. After all, why read books when you can watch Fox News?

WaPo Article on Politics Turning Left Overlooks Key Point

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an interesting article from the July 26, 2007 edition of the Washington Post raising the issue of whether the electorate is turning "left." The article is interesting, but misses a key point. In pointing out how the word "liberal" has been demonized by the Republican right, the fails to distinguish between social liberalism and economic liberalism.

On issues involving civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, abortion, and crime, the right has been very successful in dividing Democrats along gender, racial, and sexual orientation lines. On issues that are economic, such as raising the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, and the environment, the right has not been nearly as successful in getting the public to adopt its positions or in dividing Democrats.

What's happening now is that economic issues are beginning to become more and more important because of the uncertainity in the economy, globalization, the collapse of America's health care system, and global warming. All of those issues raise anxiety among voters and they are looking for a government that can provide them some security. The right's total dependence on markets to cure everything isn't going to cut it in that kind of environment.

Liberals Should Encourage Ron Paul to Run as Independent

Salon Magazine has an article about Representative Ron Paul, the libertarian who is running for the GOP nomination by being against the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act,advocating the United States out of the United Nations, the phasing out of Social Security, and a return to the gold standard for American currency. According to Salon Magazine, Paul is driving the power brokers of the Republican Party crazy. Not surprisingly they have already lined up a challenger for him in the 2008 Republican primary for his Congressional seat.

Interestingly he has a growing presence on the Internet. An example is support for his videos on You Tube. His videos have been viewed over 980,000 times. That is more than Romney, McCain, or Giuliani, all of whom are the top three in most polls Republicans. He is attracting support from young people who are interested in his views on the Iraq War. He is also unconventional, appearing on the Bill Maher show and scheduling an appearance on the Jon Stewart Show.

Now, this guy is not going to win the Republican Party nomination, but clearly there is a market for his message. Liberals and progressives should find a way to fund this guy and encourage him to run as an independent. He would probably pull about 1 or 2% of the vote, much like Nader. Like Nader, however, if he pulled that 1 or 2% in the right states, say Florida, Ohio, or perhaps Virgina, he could shift those states to the Democratic victory column.

That was why, of course, that Republican donors supported Ralph "It Doesn't Matter If a Democrat or a Republican wins" Nader. That resulted in Florida being lost to Bush and that resulted in the terrible mess that we are in with Iraq. Maybe its time for liberals and progressives to return the favor.

Fewer Voters Identifying with Republicans

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an article in the Washington Post about a study that was recently released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It shows that while 50% of the public identifies with the Democratic Party only 35% identify with the Republican Party. The study also shows that the public is trending away from conservative solutions to problems and towards acceptance of a more active role for government. (You can read the Pew Research Center's summary of the study by clicking here: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=312)

Voters Look For Character Not Experience

This is from the AP news story linked to in this entry's title:

WASHINGTON — For all the policy blueprints churned out by presidential campaigns, there is this indisputable fact: People care less about issues than they do about a candidate's character.

A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says 55 percent of those surveyed consider honesty, integrity and other values of character the most important qualities they look for in a presidential candidate.

The story goes on to examine the poll results and also to examine how the various candidates stack up on the whole "character" factor. One of the political consultants quoted in the poll points out that "character" encompasses a matrix of issues, including intelligence and empathy. This poll makes sense because voters don't have the time to get to really know a candidate and never did have the time. Voters have always depended on cues to tell them how to vote.

In the past such cues included a candidate's party identification. That cue, however, is declining in importance and has been for several years. What has taken its place are things such as gender, race, religion, and "character." These cues give voters short-hand information about whether they are likely to agree with what a candidate would do if the candidate is elected.

Now, liberals and progressives have a choice: they can gnash their teeth in frustration and demand that voters look at issues, something that voters aren't likely to do, or they can start running campaigns based on the cues that voters use in deciding who to support. Our recommendation is the latter because we want to win elections not run civic education campaigns.

Psychology Today Article on Political Ideology & Personality

Okay, so we have all instinctly known that there are innate personality differences between liberals and conservatives, but it is nice to have proof. If you click on the link in this entry's title, you will see an article that explores those differences. Conservatives respond more to threats that involve death and are more organized in their personal lives. Liberals like color and are messier. The article also explains why Republicans use ads that convey implied or explicit threats such as the ad that the Bush campaign ran in 2004 with the wolves or the ad that Reagan ran in 1984 with the bear lumbering through the woods. What the article also points out, though, is that research indicates that simply asking people to stop and analyze the information they are being given leads to a decrease in susceptibility to this kind of psychological manipulation.

Advice to Progressives: Dream Bigger Dreams!

Katha Pollitt of the Nation magazine has advice for liberals: dream bigger dreams! Advocate universal healthcare for all, cheap or free higher education, and a minimum wage of $9.00 an hour and indexed for inflation. Build a movement and stop worrying about finding a leader. If you have the right movement, leaders will emerge and come to you. It is a provocative article and can be read by clicking on the link in the title heading.