Yesterday, the nonpartisan National Journal released its 27th annual vote rankings and named Barack Obama as the #1 most liberal senator in 2007: “The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.” Hillary Clinton also shifted left, but ranked 16th in 2007. Obama’s lifetime rating is 88 and Hillary’s is 79.4. Are you shocked? Good Lt. at the Jawa Report suggests a new Obama campaign slogan: “Vote for the most liberal member of the Senate ‘Change.'” At the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford posts a statement from an Obama spokeswoman: “Part of the reason he’s appealing to some Republicans and independents is, he has that authenticity…He’s very clear from the beginning that we can’t do this alone and we need to work across party lines and focus more on uniting than on dividing.” Stuttaford responds: “What he is is an authentic liberal with a nice line in flowery, if vapid, oratory. That’s a reason for liberals to vote for him, and for everyone else to be alarmed.” Allahpundit agrees: “So successful has the Messiah been in focusing attention on his own charisma, oratory, and ‘narrative’ and away from his actual record that even 20% of the readership of a site like this is willing (momentarily) to vote for him over McCain.” And how did the lefty blogs react? Denial, denial, denial. Jason Linkins at Huffington Post argues that “the biggest flaw with these rankings is that they purport to render a quantitative measurement to a qualitative attribute.” Sam Boyd at the American Prospect‘s TAPPED says, “So the National Journal has ranked Barack Obama as the nation’s most liberal senator which seems wrong to me, but is still kinda cool. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the National Journal rankings are completely ridiculous.” Why ridiculous? MSNBC’s Mark Murray notes, “National Journal used 99 Senate votes in 2007 as the basis for its rankings, and because he was on the presidential campaign trail, Obama missed a third of those votes. (According to the magazine, Obama voted the liberal way 65 out of 66 votes. Clinton, meanwhile, voted the liberal way in 77 out of her 82 votes).” Still, it’s not difficult to guess how they would have voted on the missed votes, no? I thought that “liberals” would be happy that one of their own has such widespread appeal. What’s the problem? Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly blog explains: “If all of this sounds a little familiar, it’s because in 2004, National Journal named John Kerry the most liberal senator of 2004 (John Edwards was fourth), which became one of the principal talking points of the Bush-Cheney campaign, repeated at literally every campaign rally for months.” Ah, yes, that worked out so well in 2004.
