You call this "down and dirty"?

The gotcha game in which Tim Russert specializes is beneath all the candidates.

This doesn't seem to be a distortion or a pile on or even dirty politics.

Your search isn't working, but I bet this blog was against the bankruptcy bill. It's a legitimate issue. I'd be glad to have Hillary become Pres, but her justification smacks of the Clinton triangulation we hear so much about.

If you want to talk about dirty politics, talk about MSNBC deciding that Hillary shouldn't be the front runner and doing whatever they can to tear her down.

Obama and Edward's conduct towards HRC may be less than irreproachable at times, but this isn't one of them.

I really don't follow you.

As you say it's at least arguably a bad bill. She voted for it. Obama says she shouldn't have and that he wouldn't. Thus he pointed out a difference between them . That seems precisely what should be done in a campaign.

As to Hillary's reasons for voting for it ,we can read them and decide whether that affects our reaction to her vote.

I'll be voting for one or them in the primaries so I welcome this information which for me puts a weight Obama's side of the scale. My daughter who works in credit cards will probably put a weight on Hillary's side unless she's put off by Hillary's explanation of her vote.

Useful information. Far more so than the "inside baseball" chatter about how she/he'reacted to a "gotcha" question not intended to illuminate differences in policy , just to try and embarrass a candidate( and make the "moderator" seem important).

Even if justified as providing insight into how she/he handles pressure. As if there's anything
in common between the skill required to dodge
Tim Russertt and the judgment required to avoid a presidency like our current nightmare.

What was Dodd's vote on this issue. New York is the financial capital of the country of the world as Conneticut is a major insurance center. Supporting policies that may do enormous harm to your home state economic engines is rarely a good thing for a Senator. It is why so many farm state senators support silly farm policies.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I think this is a legitimate thing for them to argue about. Hillary has a defensible position (and while she should have tried to obstruct it better in 2005, she did vote against the cloture that brought the bill to a floor vote, unlike Joes Lieberman and Biden). But, it's a position she should have to defend and it's fair for Obama to go after her on it.

Problem is, Obama was around in 2005 and he wasn't exactly a hero on the bankruptcy bill fight. Not that he did anything wrong, he just didn't do anything special.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Votes speak louder than words. Debate over specific votes is appropriate but to select one vote to pretend that you are more progressive than another candidate can be a distortion.

Progressive Punch tabulates the votes of all Senators on progressive issues. They have screens which go all the way down to describing the specific amendment being voted on.

On a lifetime basis Clinton at 91.34 agreement with progressive positions is 15 best out of all the Senators. Obama comes in at 89.02 which puts him 24 out of 100. These difference are not due to their respective states since Schumer comes in 17 of 100 almost identical to Clinton while Durbin the other Illinois Senator comes in 9 out of 100 -- substantially more progressive that Obama.

Funny, that thread title: Bankrupt?

"...Obama has many attractive qualities--as do his rivals--..."

Like cozying up to gay-bashing, closeted, fundamentalists?

It's an Obamination to be black, to know intimately what it means to be black in America; and yet crap on people who are subject to discrimination as Obama did in South Carolina.

It's hypocritical to say "...the kind of thing we’re fighting against...." in or on any forum; yet engage retrograde fundamentalism for political gain in South Carolina.

As if no one will notice, no one call it what it is; like American culture can continue to afford that discrimination; that "we" can ignore his hypocrisy.

Like it's polite to ignore it, to not mention it:

He's black, and he's willing to perpetuate societal discrimination against homosexuals, lesbians, and transgendered people. Even if they are black.

So I'd ask him: What "we", black man?

People jumped all over that white guy bounty hunter; people jumped all over Andrew "Dice" Clay (both white) but Barack "I'm black!" Obama: not a problem for a black man to use societal animosity toward gays as a political lever.

As long as discrimination is coded or subtle, and especially if it's fortified with melanin, it's okay.

Someone wake me when 'homophobe' becomes as odious as 'racist'.

I agree with Todd. We should all vote for Nader instead.

I agree with Todd. We should all vote for Nader instead.

There you go. Todd is right for once. LOL!

If Lady Hawk voted with the Democrats so frequently, then maybe the Democrats ain't no liberals.

But the voting records tell a very partial story. Kucinich is quite right that rational national healthcare require that the insurance companies lose it all.

Obama makes a dubious argument that one-payer is the goal but there is no way to get there for now. At least there is a start.

Hillary takes payola from the insurance and thinks the bribery is mighty satisfying.

It is the same up and down the line with Hillary. The hell with the working classes. Up with the - er, middle class. Privilege is what this country is about.

Yup, Toddy has her nailed all right.

Best, Terry

Oh, and I forgot to mention ... I have to express some skepticism that provisions for collecting child support or court judgments against abortion protesters truly amount to justification for supporting bankruptcy reform. In my book, they're improvements you make to legislation that you perceive as inevitable, not reasons to suport it in the first place. And I'll confess to a certain resentment that "women's issues" are being used to gussy up profoundly anti-working class legislation.

Why don't they just put it all in plain-text
english, and call it the 'screwed for life Act'?

HOW many people in the United States today are
simply SO buried in debt that they will NEVER
see daylight again? HOW many?

Does anyone think Hillary can honestly win the presidency

If I was betting, I would put all my money on Hillary.

At the same time, she is probably the only one who can provide a horrendous candidate like Giuliani a shot. No sensible voter will believe a thing either of them say. The choice between authoritarian rightwing hawks is not overly palatable to me. I will pass.

The damage downballot will be enormous in my estimation and we will get more of the same for at least 4 years as decay and corruption continues unabated.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Change.

Best, Terry

Can anyone tell me the reasoning behind Spitzer's driver license plan for illegals?

I've heard many people criticize the act itself but never heard a discussion of the reasoning behind it, which may have been logical.

It’s simple pragmatism, really. Whether illegal immigrants are licensed to drive or not has no effect on the number of illegal immigrants in NYS. It does, however, impact auto insurance rates and the probability that people in car accidents with illegal immigrants will have little recourse to sue for damages to health and property.

Allow illegal immigrants to get driver licenses and there will be an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who get and keep auto insurance, thereby reducing the number of accidents involving uninsured drivers, and furthermore, reducing statewide auto insurance rates.

Spitzer always required passport quality ID in order to get licensed. What Chertoff hated about the plan was that Spitzer would provide full driver licenses, which can be used for boarding domestic flights and getting access to government buildings, etc. They have now compromised so that illegal immigrants will receive a second tier license that permits them to drive, but cannot be used as authentication for domestic flights or entering government buildings, etc.

If there had been comprehensive immigration reform, then NYS would not have had to deal with this issue. As that reform died at the hands of the conservatives, Spitzer had no choice but to do something about it. He owes it the people of NYS who deserve to be protected from uninsured drivers.

The canard in this whole debate is the suggestion that giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses will somehow increase illegal immigration, or that by not licensing illegal immigrants you can lower the number of illegal immigrants who are driving on the roads with the rest of us.

The sole purpose is to reduce the number of uninsured drivers; and who can really argue that that is not a good thing.
/c

In the blogosphere every one is an expert, so no one is an expert.

It's only a process for quantifying qualities based on a balanced scorecard approach. Hardly 100% accurate, and for you not convincing. Fair enough.

Of course one does have to step back from the specific case of quantifying progressiveness and understand that the methodology is ubiquitously used, outside of any directly mathematical situation.

Your suspicions of its validity remind me a little of Stephen Colbert's suspicious of facts and how do they stack up against feelings.

So the study doesn't feel right to you. I respect that.

/c

In the blogosphere every one is an expert, so no one is an expert.

Clinton only votes left when it doesn't matter. You have to look at the votes that make a difference or require political courage and genuine leadership.

Here is an excerpt of Obama's statement on the bankruptcy bill that he voted against with a link to the full statement:

Mr. President, this bill gives us a rare chance to ask ourselves who we're here to protect - who we're here to stand up and speak out for.
We should curb bankruptcy abuse and to demand a measure of personal responsibility from people. We all want that.

But there are also millions of middle-class families out there who are struggling to get by. They work hard, they love their children, and they're willing to do anything to give them the best possible shot in life.
And in the ten minutes since I've been talking, about thirty of them have filed for bankruptcy.

We live in a rapidly changing world with an economy that's moving just as fast. We can't always control this and we can't promise that the changes will always leave everyone better off.

But we can do better than one bankruptcy every nineteen seconds. We can do better than forcing people to choose between the cost of health care and the cost of college. We can do better than big corporations using bankruptcy laws to deny health care and benefits to their employees. And we can give people the basic tools and protections they need to believe that in America, your circumstance is no limit to the success you may achieve and the dreams you may fulfill.

And so, while I cannot support this bill the way it is written

Dodd and Obama voted no. Biden voted yes. Who knows how Clinton would have voted ?

The bill was always tricky for her because it divides Democrats as well as two opposing constituencies in New York: banking interests and the unions. Between 2000 and 2006, commercial banking interests gave HRClinton $685,000, according to www.opensecrets.org, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics.

She persuaded WJCLinton to veto the bankruptcy bill in 1997, voted for a similar version in 2001 and missed the vote in 2005, when Bill was in the hospital. She advocated weakening the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, telling Feingold to "live in the real world." Unlike Edwards and Obama, she accepts campaign contributions from lobbyists and corporate PACs.

In 2005, the bankruptcy bill was a high profile issue, and in 1997 and 2001 it wasn't, so her vote must be looked at through that prism. In 1997 it looks like she opposed the bill, in 2001 she voted for the bill. The times when we're not looking is when character comes out, and in HRClinton's case her vote for the bill in 2001 is a useful indicator as to where her loyalties may lie.

Hillary is the least liberal/progressive candidate of thsoe running on the Democratic side. She's the worst possible combination for a Democratic candiate -- a conservative who's publicly perceived to be a liberal.

Here is Progressivepunch.com's description of their methodology:

Using publicly published data from Congressional Quarterly, we averaged a couple of different types of scores that they published, looking at all votes going back to January 1, 1991. After going through a number of steps and gyrations, we came up with a list of six hard-core progressive United States Senators (6% of that body) and 39 hard-core progressive United States Representatives (about 9% of that body). The algorithm that we've used to come up with these progressive scores is as follows: We take ANY VOTE in which a majority of the progressives we've identified--so in the House say, if there were no absences, it would be 20 of the 39--voted in opposition to a majority of the Republican caucus and have that vote qualify for the database. The same process is used in the Senate. So, non-ideological votes such as National Groundhog Day: 429-0 with 6 absences, do not qualify for the database. ANY vote in which a majority of progressives in the progressive cohort listed just below here votes against a majority of Republicans qualifies for the database. The percentage of votes which qualify using this algorithm remains remarkably constant from one Congress to another, about half of all votes cast.
1. "The Progressive Position" by definition, is the position of the majority of the Progressives, not the position of the majority of the Republicans. We've tested this algorithm in the real world and it works extremely well. In the case of members of Congress elected before November 1990, the "Progressive Lifetime Scores" include only votes cast in Congress since January 1, 1991 (1991-92 was the first full Congress where vote records were computerized). In the case of members of Congress elected on or after November 1990, the scores include all votes that have ever been cast while that member has been in Congress. The column labeled " Progressive '07-'08 Scores" is for the current Congress and shows scores for votes since January 2007, which allows for an apples-to-apples comparison for the same time period of all current members of Congress.

The votes used to calculate the scores in the "Chips Are Down '07-'08" column are a subset of the overall votes that qualify according to the Progressive Punch algorithm described above. They show the impact that even a small number of Democrats have when they defect from the progressive position. These are votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result).

Absences by members of Congress are penalized in scoring only if the margin was The composite scores displayed when one clicks on the Select by Score option from the Progressive Punch home page include ALL votes cast in the US Congress since Jan 1, 1991 WHETHER OR NOT we have written a narrative vote description explaining what transpired with that vote. The individual category scores (e.g., Environment, Global Warming) include only votes since January 1, 2002 and have a hole in 2006 when we ran out of money. We resumed in 2007. We are trying to clear up the backlog. Donations help. (See donation button on home page).
There is no surefire objective way to compute how progressive, or for that matter how conservative, a member of Congress is. A lot of thought went into coming up with this methodology. That doesn't mean it can't be critiqued. What we have done is to try to take human beings out of the equation as much as possible. In other words, the percentages calculated on this site do not necessarily correlate with the individual political positions of Joshua Grossman, the primary author of this website. There are some criticisms that could be levied against our methodology. One is that it treats every vote equally, when they're obviously not all equally important. Another is that lonely principled stands, that might be viewed by some as progressive, such as Barbara Lee's sole vote against war in Afghanistan, do not qualify for the database, because not enough Progressives rallied around her flag (no pun intended). One other thing that no voting index can measure is intensity of support/leadership.
The research functions currently available on this site are just the first step in terms of what we plan to make available to the public.

List of Members Used as Control Group to Contrast with Republican Caucus to Determine Progressive Scores (alphabetical by last name)

Senators
Boxer, Barbara-CA
Durbin, Richard-IL
Lautenberg, Frank R.-NJ
Kennedy, Edward M-MA
Reed, Jack-RI
Sanders, Bernard-VT

I'm hugely cynical about the Democratic voting this session. It seems some of the votes have been designed to be lost and some Senators have been designated to take one for the team. What set me off on this was the FISA vote in particular when our new Senator Klobuchar voted for the FISA bill against all logic but the Presidential candidates voted safely against the bill when enough other votes had been lined up to defeat it. Look at the Mukasey vote this week. With any real effort, the party could have blocked his confirmation but they chose to pretend to fight him and let him be confirmed. On this one is seems it was "fixed" that none of the candidates would vote at all! The party doesn't even seem to want to win any victories over the Republicans or against special interests. They only pretend and they aren't even any good at pretense.

Progressivepunch.com does make apples to apples comparisons for the votes for the current year. Here, too, Clinton comes out ahead.

When making lifetime comparisons of course there will be more data points for Clinton.

Progressivepunch.com allows you to break it down by issue areas. For war and piece issues, Israeli/Palestinian issues, and general military funding Clinton votes more in the progressive direction than does Obama whose numbers are almost identical to Lieberman's.

Since Progressivpunch does not describe how they selected their 'control' group I was glad to see the high degree of overlap of that group with Senators ranking in the 90's from your sources. As to Sanders' inclusion I suspect that this is because he votes with this group.

The reason for the discrepancy between the ratings is not clear. Perhaps if we go back and see if your two rankings rate any votes differently than does punch.

Most probably your group's rankings are for the more prominent votes while progressivepunch includes many more votes from the day-to-day work of the Senate.

It is a lot easier to sway your ranking on a small series of votes rather than a larger number. For example, to the best of my recollection, an article on a then recently acquired advisor of Obama's persuaded him to vote against Roberts despite Obama's initial position that this was something that the President got to decide.