Where the candidates stand - are they liberal or not?

Found this at http://www.ontheissues.org , take it for what it's worth. It ranks all the candidates based on their stances. Oddly, one of the most liberal (in their view) is Braun.

So, let's take a look.

Howard Dean


John Edwards


Dick Gephardt


Bob Graham


John Kerry


Dennis Kucinich


Joe Lieberman


Carol Moseley Braun


Al Sharpton wasn't included.

I couldn't open the link, but looked at all the graphs. Very interesting stuff. You might want to try reposting the link.

It had a comma at the end of it. I fixed it now.

It is telling. I do think it shows everyone Dean isn't too liberal, while he isn't too conservative either. I'm still shocked by Braun.

He gets tagged as DLC around here, but he's among the most liberal. Which is great, cause he's my guy!

In fact all these are a surprise, except for Holy Joe.

So a lot of people don;t know much about him. Did you see him on C-SPAN? I thought he did rather well. He's not shy about taking on Bush.

He is tough as nails on *, is great on the issues, straightforward, humorous, very appealing.

There is no question about Kucinich...and he is certainly more electable than Carol. We need to get behind him. Democrats of the world...Unite!

I agree. But you'd never know it from the media.

But also by listening to a lot of people here you'd of think Dean was DEAD CENTER, which if you go by these maps, he's not. He's left of center.

Because in the case Bob Graham he is even more hawkish than many republicans. A large part of being defined a liberal should include an aversion to invading other countries for shit reasons.

Because he thought the reasons were sh*t. So I guess he would qualify.

I like it

moderates leaning left on an issue or two. What's really interesting is that Edwards, Gephardt, Kucinich, and Lieberman all lean toward populism. The first three also lean toward liberalism -- Kucinich is actually on the cusp between populism and liberalism -- which isn't surprising, but Lieberman's tilt toward populism is a bit of a surprise. Kerry, OTOH, tilts left and a bit libertarian.

I'd like to see an explanation of why each is mapped this way, such as how many questions must get a liiberal answer to move the dot away from center, how many dots to move one block, etc. What makes Kerry a bit libertarian rather than trending toward populism? What makes Lieberman a bit of a populist?

Inquiring minds want to know! :7

Interesting that the site does this--they changed the original "diamond" format (see the link on the "Grid" page) which had "Authoritarian" at the opposite corner from "Libertarian". These seem like the natural opposite poles. How exactly is populism an opposite of libertarian? It doesn't seem that way from the definitions that are given.

Or maybe they've decided to do away with the Cartesian format of the diamond and make it more like a map with neighboring "countries"?

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