and his grade rates him as more liberal than most of the candidates who ran for the nomination. Only his stance on the Iraq War has people trying to miscast him as a conservative.
On most issues, Lieberman has been far more liberal than John Edwards or Bob Graham or most other Southern Democrats.
In actual practice he is ffar more liberal than Howard Dean whose record as Governor is virtually the reverse of the his campaign platform, which is not unusual for Dean who has a lifetime record of running supporting liberal ideas, but when elected, opposintg almost all liberal initiatives on taxation. government spending and many other social issues that lie at the heart of Democratic Party ideology.
Lieberman has supported some of the most liberal initiatives put forward by congress, has one of the strongest voting records and positions on assistance to the poor and the middle class including a much opposed program to create a federal housing trust to enable the poor to afford to purchase houses, as well as provide suppplemets for rent to those not earning a living wage. Lieberman like Kerry supported raising taxes on the top 2 percent in oprder to provide an even larger tax cut to the poor and the middle class.
Dean on the other hand, wanted to repeal middle class tax cuts, as governor refused to raise taxes on the rich in order to prevent cuts to much needed social programs for the poor and elderly, (threatened to actually veto any attempt to raise taxes on the rich in Vermont). For most of his five terms as Governor, the Democrats had to fight him tooth and nail to prevent him from cutting social programs to the poor, the disabled and the elderly. Every budget Dean presented every year was designed to cut out all cost of living inccreases to all programs that assisted the poor, the blind, the disabled, and the elderly. While Dean was Was governor, his most vocal opponenet were liberal democrats and progressives, while the entire right, except for a few ultraconservative neo-cons was extremely mute in its criticisms of Dean. Some of Vermonts most powerful Republicans formed an organization to support Dean for Governor, and to directly oppose the ultra conservative Ruth Dwyer, stating that while Dean was in office, there was no need fo the Republicans to put up a candidate against him, as Most of Deans political ideology was shared by most Vermont Republicans. The only issue that Vermont Republicans had difficulties with was Deans signing of the Civil Unions legislation, and they frequently tried tried to make the case that this was not Deans legislation , but that it was bbasically forced on him by the Vermont Supreme Court, and that had Dean been responsible for initiating such legislation it never would have occured, as Dean had a record before civil unions became a major Voermnont issue, of opposing separate legislation regarding gay civil rights, stating that such legislation should be put forth as an overall civil rights bill dealing generally with civil rights for minorities.
I find it almost amusing that many Democrats who attack Lieberman are the Democratic version of the sort of blind support that Bush got from individuals who supported him regardless of the evidence in the records. Regardless of Bush's terrible handling of Iraq, and all of the findings of numerous comittees that found no links to Saddam and Al Qaeda or September 11th, No WMD's all sorts of problems with Bush's fiscal policy, such as the witholding of information on the costs of the new medicare prescription drug bill, Bush supporters sinply still refuse to accept the evidence. They still beleive that Saddam had WMD's, that he had links to Al Qaeda, that he had something to do with September 11th, that he finances Palestinian suicie bombers (he did not, he simply gave money to the widows of such suicide bombers, becanse Muslims consider them to be Holy Warrior, and the Quran makes it a religious obligation to provide support for the widows and orphans of holy warriors. Saddam's may have been trying to curry favor among religious Muslims for his secular government, but in no way were these payments offered as incentives to suicide bombers to continue bombing). Polls found that Bush supporters were surprisingly ignorant of the reality of these things, or completely refused to accept the findings of numerous intelligence organizations and comittees designed to get to the truth on these matters.
It seems that there is a contingency among democrats who behave exactly as Bush supporters do, failing to examine candidates actual records on issues, while supporting canddaites who tailor their campaigns to appear to support liberal or progressive policies,, but who have records that are woefully lacking actual support for democratic and progressive ideas where they really count, when they have to enact policy or support legisltion or pass legislation based on liberal or progressive principals. Liberman has a record of supporting, voting for, and attempting to pass some of the most progressive legislation put forth by Democrats. A few other candidates had less sterling records than Lieberman. Some actively opposed virtually all progressive and liberal legislation presented to them, ot hung back and avoided taking a stand until they had not alternative.
A Democrat who mindlessly supports any candidate who simply sculpts a campaign to attract voters, but has no real record of working to support and uphold Democratic and Progressive ideas, is really not much better than those mindless fools who put George Bush back into office based on some vague principal such as "values". In the end, when the failure of Bush to get results, and all of the instances in which the Bush Administration has been found to have lied or misrepresented the intelligence to support his going into Iraq, Bush supporters had to fall back on a vague "value" based position to justfiy their support for Bush. Some Democrats are engaged in similar blind support of candidates who would in all likelihood not differ substantially from the current administration when it comes to supporting Democratic ideas.
One quote from Dean was most interesting:
He once likened a group of liberal Democrats to communists. He publicly said he hoped one fellow Democrat would lose shortly before her election.
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/07/06/Worldandnation/Democrat_laces_up_a_l.shtmlAnd there are Democrats who attack Joe Lieberman as being a conservative.
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