Friday, July 16, 2004
Context
I am sure you have heard the well repeated mantra by the Republicans about Kerry being the most liberal US Senator and Edwards coming in at fourth! Some even express glee that Kerry is ahead of Ted Kennedy! But what does this tell us? Would you know, for example, how much snow a particular area might get if you only experienced one snow fall? No. Any reasonable person would want to know the trend. That way you could tell whether the snow was an anomoly or in the main.
The magazine that produced the oft-quoted study, "The National Journal", has been doing this study for about 19 years, about the same amount of time that Kerry has been in the Senate. Edwards joined in 1999. So if we look at the ratings of the pair since 1999, is the 2003 rating an accurate reflection?
As the NJ article notes: "The bigger picture presents a more nuanced view of the two
senators on the Democratic presidential ticket."
Neither senator comes close to the "liberal" numbers that they managed to get in 2003. Here is a breakdown for both:
Kerry Edwards
1999 16th 31st
2000 23rd 19th
2001 11th 35th
2002 8th 40th
2003 1st 4th*
If you look at Edwards's record, you will see that he has mostly been toward the middle to conservative end of the spectrum while Kerry has mostly sat right in the center. Why the 2003 outlier? Because the two were gearing up for a run for the nomination, and to get the nomination in either political party means that you have to appeal to your base (you know, by doing such things as pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage).
Yet the Bush-Cheney connection, as well as the Republican minions, have been using every opportunity to use the line about the most liberal, out of the mainstream ticket in history!
That is fine. It is the prerogative of the campaign to distort the truth. What is not ok is that the media parrot the line. Now you could ask: Maybe it was too difficult for the media, on the fly, to come up with the trend data that I listed above. That would be true if I had to go through each NJ article over the last several years. But I didn't. This information came from the same article that contains the 2003 information. When the Bush-Cheney team brought up that article, the media had it right in front of them. They could have read it (it is two pages long) and found that the Bush-Cheney team was being picky with the facts. But the media have not. Thus many Americans who have yet to form an opinion of John Kerry and John Edwards are going to hear that they are the most liberal senators to date.
When the watchdog has died, who is left to watch those in power?
*Source: Cohen, Richard E. "Not So the Same After All." "National Journal" Vol. 36, No. 28. July 10, 2004.
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The magazine that produced the oft-quoted study, "The National Journal", has been doing this study for about 19 years, about the same amount of time that Kerry has been in the Senate. Edwards joined in 1999. So if we look at the ratings of the pair since 1999, is the 2003 rating an accurate reflection?
As the NJ article notes: "The bigger picture presents a more nuanced view of the two
senators on the Democratic presidential ticket."
Neither senator comes close to the "liberal" numbers that they managed to get in 2003. Here is a breakdown for both:
Kerry Edwards
1999 16th 31st
2000 23rd 19th
2001 11th 35th
2002 8th 40th
2003 1st 4th*
If you look at Edwards's record, you will see that he has mostly been toward the middle to conservative end of the spectrum while Kerry has mostly sat right in the center. Why the 2003 outlier? Because the two were gearing up for a run for the nomination, and to get the nomination in either political party means that you have to appeal to your base (you know, by doing such things as pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage).
Yet the Bush-Cheney connection, as well as the Republican minions, have been using every opportunity to use the line about the most liberal, out of the mainstream ticket in history!
That is fine. It is the prerogative of the campaign to distort the truth. What is not ok is that the media parrot the line. Now you could ask: Maybe it was too difficult for the media, on the fly, to come up with the trend data that I listed above. That would be true if I had to go through each NJ article over the last several years. But I didn't. This information came from the same article that contains the 2003 information. When the Bush-Cheney team brought up that article, the media had it right in front of them. They could have read it (it is two pages long) and found that the Bush-Cheney team was being picky with the facts. But the media have not. Thus many Americans who have yet to form an opinion of John Kerry and John Edwards are going to hear that they are the most liberal senators to date.
When the watchdog has died, who is left to watch those in power?
*Source: Cohen, Richard E. "Not So the Same After All." "National Journal" Vol. 36, No. 28. July 10, 2004.
