Kirsten Gillinbrand is a liberal
Why do some call Gillinbrand a centrist?
The Nation has called her a centrist, maybe using their own ideology as the standard. I saw the label in major publications as well.
But being pro-gun and anti-illegal-immigration does not negate the fact that she voted in 2007 to redeploy Iraq troops within 90 days. How centrist is that? There are more than two issues in the world. When the totality of Gillinbrand's statements and votes (not just guns and immigration) were analyzed by the independent political website ontheissues.org, the site came up with the following graph illustrating her ideology:
She's pro-embryonic stem cell research, too.
Look at the big picture. See the entire analysis: http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Kirsten_Gillibrand.htm
If you wish to label her a centrist <i>in comparison with other Democratic NY politicians</i>, then say so, after of course proving with data that the average Democratic NY politician is a liberal in comparision to Gillebrand, when all things are considered.
If any of you is aware of any website dedicated to labeling politicians' according to their history, please point to their assessment of Gillibrand. Let's see who among those who have done their homework see her as centrist.
(crossposted from my Daily Kos account)
She's a liberal. But she's a chick who supports gun owners rights which makes her unacceptable for some democrats. Jim Webb, Howard Dean, Schweitzer - kiss ass gun toting male Dems. Not so for a woman Democrat.
January 25, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
And a list of other NRA endorsed Democrats from 2004:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=172118&mesg_id=172141
January 25, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really that should be kick ass, not kiss ass ;) Oopsie!
January 25, 2009 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fake "gun rights" issue is far-right lunatic fringe. The only exceptions are ignroant of the law and suckers for the NRA's anti-Constitutionalism.
Congress' debates of that which became the Bill of Rights are legislative history -- legal authority. Congress -- not the NRA -- makes the laws. The NRA never mentions those debates -- by those who WROTE the Second Amendment -- because it is OPPOSITE their lie. This is the original draft of that which became the Second Amendment. Note the last clause, which is the ONLY -- POSITED -- "individual right" debated concerning that Amendment. It was ultimately VOTED DOWN -- which means the Second Amendment has nothing whatever to do with "individual" anything:
"The right of the people* to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person** religiously scrupulous of*** bearing arms, shall not be compelled**** to render military service in person." (_Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary History from the First Federal Congress_ [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991], Ed. by Helen E. Veit, et al., at 12.)
*"People" is PLURAL, as in "We the people". It is not "I the people," or "We the individual". The source of that clause was four state constitutions/bills of rights adopted in 1776-77, and 1780, and it was drawn from those constitutions' Militia Clauses.
**Individual.
***Against.
****INVOLUNTARY.
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to get the support of the anti-Federalists for ratification of the Constitution. It did nothing to change the Militia Clauses in the Constitution itself:
U.S. Con. Art. I, S. 8, C. 15: [Congress shall have Power] To provide for calling forth the Militia to Execute [enforce] the Laws, [and] suppress Insurrections.
U.S. Con. Art. I, S. 8, C. 16: [Congress shall have Power] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be emplyed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
Last but not least, the head of the State's militia is the State's governor: it is not possible that the State's governor is going to "defned against" the government of which he is simultaneously head.
Also last but not least: the militia is a PUBLIC institution -- but the private, individual gun owner is not. The Second Amendment is solely about well regulated militia.
But here's the laughable irony: the whole drive to establish that the Second Amendment was based upon the effort to sidestep all gun control laws, that based upon the nonsensical claim that the Second Amendment PROHIBITED REGULATION of whatever is within its scope. These are the facts on that point of which the NRA also makes zero mention:
Ratification of the Bill of Rights was completed on December 15, 1791.
Congress enacted the Militia Act, which self-evidently regulates the militia of the Second Amendment, on May 8, 1792.
And double the irony: Far-right political hack Scalia, despite falsifying the intent of the Second Amendment, nonetheless established that the Second Amendment does not protect FROM the rule of law; therefore established that gun control laws are CONSTITUIONAL. So now, instead of only opposing the original set of gun control laws existing outside the Second Amendment, they now must deal with TWO sets of gun control laws.
Gun rights are not "under attack," and never have been; rather, that paranoid's politics of fear is nothing more than an anti-Constitutional advertising campaign by the gun industry, which wants to sell more guns this year than last, and more next year than this.
Again: the bogus "gun rights" issue is far-right lunatic fringe asserted by America-haters and law-illiterates.
January 26, 2009 3:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree.
January 25, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Progrssivepunch.org puts her in the middle as 167th most progresssive in the House. There is also a selection of votes you can look at.
January 25, 2009 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
She has a good record for the Republican district she is in. That district is yellow dog Republican and she could not possibbly win running a sa traditional Democrat. The one thing about the district is that it is Pro gun with a strange counter of anti-war Republicans in terms of Iraq. Not many people remember that the Republican party in the 1960s produced anti Viet Nam war Republicans in Charles Goodell and Jacob Javitts.
The Pro War Republicans to get rid of Goodell who angered Nixon had to defeat Goodell by running James Buckley as a Conservartive. New York State has 4 political parties (Democrat, Liberal, Republican and Conservative). The Democrat normally runs with the Liberal Party and the Republican Party runs with the Conservative Party.
Because of Goodell's opposition, the GOP establishment threw their support for Buckley even though Goodell was their nominee. In 1980 when Javitts was defeated by D'Amato in the GOP primary, Javitts ran with the endorsement of the Liberal Party and caused that seat to go to D'Amato.
In a three way race, Buckley narrowly won in 1970. In 1976 Moynihan defeated Buckley.
January 25, 2009 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gillibrand comes from a family of Republicans. And as she couldn't get elected on Democratic principles, she shaped her politics to the locale and her ambitions. Election is more important than not only principles and ethics, but Constitution and rule of law itself.
January 26, 2009 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nonsense. Her "centrism" has nothing to do with gun rights and little to do with immigration. It has everything to do with her position on the nation's -- nay, the world's -- #1 issue: the relationship between the federal budget and the economy.
A member of the Blue Dog Coalition, Gillibrand is simply too conservative (read: too wrong) about the federal budget. (The initial reaction from another NY Dem is just as strange, because her reason for opposing Gillibrand is, politically speaking, a non-starter and, in the grand scheme of things, pretty darn insignificant.)
Although Gillibrand is progressive on many important issues*, she has this sentence featured high in her official bio: "She has been an advocate for decreased federal spending, and introduced legislation that would require the federal government -– just as all New York families do -- to balance their budget every year."
Politically, historically and economically speaking, that's painfully dumb. And it's our #1 issue.
It's is the exact opposite of what the country needs right now, it is the exact opposite of what President Obama is calling for, and it is the exact opposite of what the Dems in Congress are trying to achieve. Has the NY governor given us another Traitor Joe in the Senate? Will we be unable to depend on Gillibrand to support the economic stimulus plan?
The thing is, we know damn well that she's not dumb. She knows the federal budget is NOT a family budget. They don't serve the same purposes, draw on the same resources or operate on the same principles -- and I'd bet the mortgage that she knows it. So what is she doing? I hope I'm wrong, but it looks to me like she's pandering to the know-nothings and conservatives (is that redundant?) in her district. It's the sort of stupid stump speech line that play well at the county fair but make for fatally stupid policy.
People who say things they know are not true in an effort to please people who don't know as much as they should really scare me.
Equally frightening, however, is that the Dem politician -- Carolyn McCarthy -- who immediately announced she'd be running to unseat Gillibrand in two years completely ignored this fatal flaw. Instead, McCarthy picked Gillibrand's support of the Second Amendment as her reason to oppose her.
Guns? She picks guns? Not only is Gillibrand's position on guns pretty close to that of Obama's, its effect is pretty weak tea. Meanwhile, we have two wars in progress. We have a war brewing between Pakistan and India. Parts of Africa resemble Hell. Millions live on $1 a day, millions die from malnutrition, millions have no basic sanitation or potable water, millions die from HIV/AIDS. The global climate is changing for the worse far faster than we'd expected. We're still running out of oil, and we're no closer to an alternative. The economy is grinding this nation into the dust, as every day brings more news of foreclosures, layoffs and failures. We still have loose nukes floating out of Russia, and now North Korea says it has nuclear weapons.
I could go on, but you get the point: When the house is engulfed in flames, you don't stop to put a new screen on the back door. Guns are not on the radar, regardless of what the NRA fund-raising pitches scream, and all McCarthy is doing is making the NRA richer.
* Gillibrand is on the correct side on the issues of: stem cell research, contraception, Iraq, equality for gays (a recent conversion) and women, public housing, renewable energy, oil subsidies, jobs being lost to overseas locations, protecting whistle-blowers, giving DC a vote in Congress, drug reimportation, mental health parity, health insurance for poor kids, funding Medicare and Medicaid, FISA warrants for wiretaps, habeas corpus, minimum wage, labor organizing, and privatizing Social Security.
January 26, 2009 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I demonstrated the the bogus "gun rights" issue is not "centrist"; it is far-right lunatic fringe anti-gum'mint propaganda, ultimately based upon the nonsense that there's a "right" to "defend against" gov't. "Gov't" is the "system of laws" which is constituted in the Constitution, and referenced in John Adam's statement of principle: "A system of laws, and not of men."
And on the lunacy that the Constitution establishes a "right" to destroy the Constitution. I showed that is also false. See U.S. Con. Art. I, S. 8, C. 15 in my post above.
I also showed -- did you not read my post? -- that the Second Amendment is IRRELEVANT to the issue of regulation of the private, individual right to own guns. "Supporting the Second Amendment" can only mean "supporting the well regulated militia"; or, if you prefer, as effort to give relevance to such meaningless nonsense, "Supporting the troops".
January 26, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beauty (and political identity) is in the eye of the beholder. It is all relative to the observer.
Your chart is spot-on, empirically, but you are personally speaking from a relatively neutral position.
If you are a knuckle-dragging right-winger, she would be a screaming liberal who is a phony conservative to get votes, if you were a single-issue left-winger, she's a closet conservative who is a phony liberal to get votes.
Like our infinitely variable DNA, the complexity of our political make-up includes much more than right or left, it is a circle (as your chart shows quite clearly) not a line. And there's a lot of territory along that arc between those points on the circle.
January 26, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
His chart is bogus. "Libertarian" is far-right lunatic fringe, properly characterized as "the nut party".
January 26, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"just as all New York families do"
Are they suggesting all New York families live on balance budgets?
Then why are so many going bankrupt?
January 26, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
She's also one of the first Senators to be in favor of marriage equality regardless of sexual orientation. That's a recently stated position that probably moves her even a little more to the left on the chart.
January 26, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a "recently stated position" -- after she was selected Senator -- which reveals her opportunism.
January 26, 2009 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink