A comparision of the voting records of Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Dodd

In light of talk about think tank ratings today this is something that would be good to discuss. I found it when looking to verify a statement made about Obama/Lieberman's ratings from one organization (the statement was correct). This looked at the ratings from four important progressive organizations. For some reason Biden was not included in this analysis. Lieberman, however, was for comparative reasons in one.

I tried to keep it short and to the numbers. You can read the analysis at the link.

1. Progressive Punch ratings

Clinton 92%
Obama 90%
Dodd 87%
Lieberman 77%
Edwards N/A

2. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)

The list of ADA progressive scores for the time period 2001-2006 is provided in the table below.

Obama 97.5%
Clinton 95.8%
Dodd 94.1%
Edwards 82.5%

It should be noted that in 2005-2006--when Obama became a senator--Clinton's rating were identical to his.

3. AFL-CIO

Lifetime

Edwards 97%
Obama 96%
Clinton 93%
Dodd 91%

4. SEIU

2003-2007

Edwards 100%
Clinton 96.8%
Dodd 88.6%
Obama 85.3%

The labor group ratings were interesting. Edwards actually had the best ratings from both groups. This is surprising because the meme against him is that he had a conservative voting record while in Congress. This explains why he has so much labor support despite being a distant 3rd and therefore not likely to win the nomination.

Regarding Clinton vs. Obama, the ratings suggest that Clinton's record is actually slightly more progressive than Obama's, particularly on labor issues. Still, it should be said that all four are basically the same with only small differences in ratings.

Read more at http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011142.php

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What is odd about that?

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In 4+ years.

in order to count?

Some of us have to work.

Oh, and I'm sure you do work...

All I asked was how are you so cynical considering you signed up today?

I viewed the first page of this board.

Enjoy your stay. :hi:

:hi::toast:

from the left, they aren't really sufficient to sort out the graduations of left and right. You realy have to research the issues.

Only in the SEIU rating is there a double digit gap between Clinton and Obama, and there it is actually Clinton who is more progressive.

that there are many authoritarians on the left, and they love to accuse others of not being pure enough, the way they are.

thanks for posting this

Most votes aren't on big critical issues. Clinton (and Edwards - don't know about the others) voted left on the smaller issues, but went hard right on the *really* important votes (e.g., the Iraq War, permanent "free" trade status for China, The "Patriot" Acts, and so forth).

In this way, they can claim a good voting record by % - but their patrons in the Predator Class know that they're there when it really counts.

Why don't you post their entire voting records and put in bold the votes that you deem "big critical issues"? This is a game ObamaNation members play. They designate a few votes as mattering, especially if Obama was not in Congress at the time, and use it to promote the meme that Obama is a progressive savior and Clinton a right-winger and Edwards a former right-winger.

If I do it, you'll say it's rigged. Name the 5 most important votes when Clinton and Edwards were in the House. See how they voted.

Obama's tougher, because I don't think he was in Congress for many critical votes. So we can only guess how he would have voted (other than going to war).

If anyone is slightly more progressive in their voting record it is Clinton. Voting records are just one thing to look at. You also have to look at what they are running on for president. There, again, Clinton is more progressive than Obama (as is Edwards).

Funny, that.

Though I agree with you that a politician can manipulate his or her approval ratings with fluff votes, if one looks at the voting records of all U.S. Senators real differences play out in these ratings pretty much along the lines that one would expect. True blue dog centrist Democrats score significantly lower in ratings from these groups and Republicans score way way way lower. Clinton may or may not be as progressive as these ratings may imply but she is far from being a true centrist.

Most Congressional Democrats voted against the Iraq War. Clinton and Edwards (and Biden and Dodd) voted for it.

Edwards voted for job-obliterating permanent "free" trade with China, and then-candidate Clinton was also in favor.

I'm not sure how you can reconcile these votes with being a Democrat under any circumstance.

Not to mention Clinton's until-recent approval of some torture - by the way, do you know her husband was the first president to outsource torture? These are Democrats?

For instance, Edwards, who has a 100% rating from the AFL-CIO (that is the highest you can go...) and the best SEIU rating, voted against free trade with Africa in 1999. How about Peru? I noticed you did not mention that. Is that because Obama supports a FTA with Peru? This is what I was talking about. How about this? Let's limit the discussion to post-2005 and then compare Obama and Clinton's voting records. Let's leave Edwards out of it for the moment since he cannot be compared head-to-head with Obama since they never served in Congress tgether.

Torture? That is a sacred Democratic issue? Is not torturing Khalid Sheik Mohamed more important than universal health care? :wtf: Eff him. He means nothing but 47 million without health care should be fundamental to our party.

The war is a unique issue. The ratings are about overall philosophy and mostly relate to domestic issues. Even on the war Clinton and Obama have voted the same and Obama is the same, again, as Clinton on Iran.

These are areas that need a helping hand - they will not pull jobs from the US (at least for some time). China, on the other hand, is much, much different.

Somehow we made it through WWII without torture as a policy - despite the fact that our POWs were regularly tortured to death. Somehow, we actually won that war. Pure coincidence? I don't think so. Torture is anathema to all things American - it is a defining issue.

The arguments for China were not one-sided as you make it appear. Most Democrats voted for it. This was partly because it was believed that by doing that and by letting China into the WTO it would change its behavior. As to Peru, one inconvenient thing about it is that it suggests what Obama would have done on China had he been in Congress in 2000. This is another reason why Obama's record is never talked about by his supporters yet the Edawrds and Clinton records are assailed.

I don't give a damn if Khalid Shaik Mohamed has to listen to Christina Aguilera. What I care about is universal health care, poverty, global warming, etc.

In WW2 we were fighting people who had a motive to reciprocate. What do you think Al-Qaeda would do if it captured an American GI? Abide by the Geneva convention or cut off his head?

Torture had zero to do with the outcome of WW2, something someone with a FDR avatar should know.

Eisenhower credited good treatment of captured enemy as one of the most important things we did. It was essential in breaking their will to fight as it made it far easier to surrender.

We treated German POWs so well that many who were held in the US chose to stay here after the war! That's the America I want.

Do you think Khalid Shaik Mohamed would if he got his hands on an American? Do you know what the Taliban did to an American who they got their hands on in Afghanistan during the 2001 war? they didn't read him any rights and murdered him right on the spot like bloodthirsty wolves.

They often tortured, enslaved, and murdered our POWs.

Google "Bataan Death March", for example.

I know a guy who worked in a small mid-western town where they had a POW camp. The population was heavily of German background. A majority of the people admired Hitler and the Nazis, and the German POW's were treated like heroes. Many of the German soldiers decided to stay in America because Germany was a bombed out hulk, half of which was under Soviet control. There was plenty of incentive not to return to Germany after WWII.

As for the reason WWII ended like it did, it was because Germany ran out of oil to power its airplanes and its mechanized army. The German military leaders knew this. The treatment of German POW's had nothing to do with it.

"For the war" for Democrats that voted for a Resolution to force unfettered UN inspection access.

As for the other issues I think you should cite some references, as I am sure a detailed examination would reveal you have misunderstood or distorted Hillary's positions similar to how you distort the IWR.

Most Congressional Democrats voted against the IWR, or whatever you'd prefer to call it. Why?

Polls taken at the time indicated that 2/3rds of Americans thought that Bush had already decided to go to war. Did Edwards and Clinton know less than most Congressional Democrats, and 2/3rds of Americans? Do you really believe that?

debating the IWR with you.

The short version and my last comment this evening on it:

The country by a large majority wanted to force Iraq to readmit the UN inpsectors and with unfettered access.

The country by a majority wanted the Bush administration to return to the UN to gain more support from allies.

The Democrats could neither stop a war or start it with that Resolution.

Please feel free to respond, I'll read it but like I said I am not going to get into a further discussion, been there done that. I don't feel the need to change your mind.

That would have been simple. But neither she nor the rest of that crowd did. They wanted war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01chafee.html?_r=3&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

They include missed votes, so both Obama and Dodd lost points on that.
Progressive Punch also penalizes missed votes.
Other ratings systems usually don't.

By the way, I notice this analysis left off the National Journal ratings. Perhaps because it was unfavorable to Hillary.

The National Journal is not a progressive organization so that is presumably why it was not included. If NJ is included why not also include CATO and other right-wing ratings?

and its not right-wing in the slightest.
Do you have any evidence of that?
And it has nothing in common with Cato. Are you really that badly misinformed?

I meant if the author of the piece in the OP included non-progressive organizations it would open the floodgates to include right-wing orgs. Wouldn't it be interesting to see who gets the highest (relatively speaking) ratings from right-wing organizations?

or even right-wing ratings, especially if their methodology is better.

In general, I do agree that Clinton's record is more liberal than many in the blogosphere give her credit for and Edwards' is worse.

There will be differences here and there, i.e. NJ versus PP. One shows Obama is substantially more liberal than Clinton and the other shows the opposite. The overall result is clear. If you look at most group's ratings both candidates are usually vwery close to each other.

:think:

Out of all the presidential candidates. IWR/Kyl-Lieberman Clinton rates an A? Sounds like someone there at that "think tank" is a Clinton supporter. Cherrypicking a few votes
and then compiling a misleading and academically deficient ranking in order to favor Hillary is BS. We went over this in another thread and now you're starting another thread
on this?

The well-respected National Journal rated all 99 Senators and found Obama was the most liberal of all the Democratic presidential candidates. The Journal rates and ranks lawmakers on how they vote relative to each other on a conservative-to-liberal scale in both the Senate and the House.

The Journal’s scores are based on the members' votes in three areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy. This year’s scores were based on 82 key roll-call votes in the Senate and 95 in the House during 2006.

Here's the link to their methodology and their findings: http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings /

Moreover, the NJ is a non-partisan organization. The four in the OP are progressive. Still, we should not dismiss the NJ ratings but we should not also conveniently ignore the ratings from progressive organizations simply because they do not fit the carefully cultivating myth by Obama supporters regarding him and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Edwards.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the actual rankings of the NJ. Obama was 10th.

Name
Sort (alpha by surname) Liberal Score
Sort Conservative Score
Sort

Durbin, Richard, D-Ill. 95.2 4.8
Boxer, Barbara, D-Calif. 95 5
Kennedy, Edward, D-Mass. 93.7 6.3
Leahy, Patrick, D-Vt. 92.5 7.5
Harkin, Tom, D-Iowa 92 8
Reed, Jack, D-R.I. 91.3 8.7
Sarbanes, Paul, D-Md. * 89.7 10.3
Murray, Patty, D-Wash. 89.3 10.7
Mikulski, Barbara, D-Md. 88.8 11.2
Obama, Barack, D-Ill. 86 14
Wyden, Ron, D-Ore. 86 14
Kerry, John, D-Mass. 85.7 14.3
Bingaman, Jeff, D-N.M. 85.5 14.5
Levin, Carl, D-Mich. 85.3 14.7
Feingold, Russell, D-Wis. 84.5 15.5
Lautenberg, Frank, D-N.J. 84.3 15.7
Dodd, Christopher, D-Conn. 84 16
Akaka, Daniel, D-Hawaii 83.5 16.5
Menendez, Robert, D-N.J. 82.7 17.3
Jeffords, James, I-Vt. * 82.5 17.5
Dayton, Mark, D-Minn. * 81 19
Cantwell, Maria, D-Wash. 79.7 20.3
Reid, Harry, D-Nev. 78.2 21.8
Biden, Joseph, D-Del. 77.5 22.5
Feinstein, Dianne, D-Calif. 76.5 23.5
Schumer, Charles, D-N.Y. 74.5 25.5
Dorgan, Byron, D-N.D. 74.3 25.7
Bayh, Evan, D-Ind. 73.3 26.7
Inouye, Daniel, D-Hawaii 71.8 28.2
Kohl, Herb, D-Wis. 71 29
Byrd, Robert, D-W.Va. 70.5 29.5
Clinton, Hillary Rodham, D-N.Y. 70.2 29.8
Johnson, Tim, D-S.D. 69.2 30.8
Stabenow, Debbie, D-Mich. 68 32
Salazar, Ken, D-Colo. 67.8 32.2
Lieberman, Joe, ID-Conn. 67.5 32.5
Carper, Thomas, D-Del. 67.2 32.8
Baucus, Max, D-Mont. 66.2 33.8
Conrad, Kent, D-N.D. 65.3 34.7
Lincoln, Blanche, D-Ark. 62.3 37.7
Nelson, Bill, D-Fla. 60.3 39.7
Pryor, Mark, D-Ark. 59.5 40.5
Chafee, Lincoln, R-R.I. * 59 41
Landrieu, Mary, D-La. 57.5 42.5
Snowe, Olympia, R-Maine 55.5 44.5
Collins, Susan, R-Maine 52.8 47.2
Specter, Arlen, R-Pa. 52.5 47.5
DeWine, Mike, R-Ohio * 51 49
Coleman, Norm, R-Minn. 46.2 53.8
Smith, Gordon, R-Ore. 46 54
Lugar, Richard, R-Ind. 45.7 54.3
Nelson, Ben, D-Neb. 45.3 54.7

from the same organization.

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/pdf/06democrats.pdf

on edit, I should have said comparable to the other Senators running for Prez since the House rating might be different.

It is a shame Kucinich and Biden, and Gravel aren't included. I suppose we've just dropped Gravel from this race for some unknown reason. But nevertheless, this is the kind of post we need to see around here.

I think DK was not included because he is in the House and Gravel was in the Senate three decades ago. It is harder to compare them head-to-head with current senators, or a recent senator like Edwards (who can be compared head-to-head with Clinton and Dodd at least).

GDP should be filled with therads like these. Nice work.

--for average people never even gets out of committee. Our Senatorial corporate employees make sure of that.