Didn't we go through the same thing when Kerry ran?

I apologize for posting the same thing in two places, but I do hope that other readers get excited about this idea:

I've just started reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals". It is the story of Abraham Lincoln's surprising win over his much better known republican presidential candidates.

Lincoln had the self-confidence, the maturity and the outstanding leadership skills to appoint his rivals to key positions in his cabinet. In doing so, he created one of the ablest teams our country has ever seen, when we most needed one.

The threats we face today are also existential. I believe we must encourage and even demand that the ultimate democratic nominee appoint many or most of the democratic candidates to cabinet positions.

I would love to see Dennis Kucinich in charge of the Department of Defense as well as the newly created Department of Peace. How about Ralph Nader to oversee Commerce? John Edwards to oversee Labor? Joe Biden to oversee State? etc.

Can TAP (Ezra!) please write an article on this topic to generate intense and exciting debate about who should lead which departments?

I am willing to bet that Obama has the leadership skills necessary to create a truly exceptional cabinet. I hope he gets the chance - and let's encourage him to look to Lincoln's inspiring example.

Is it a coincidence that Obama chose to go on the offensive against Hillary's voting record and her version of politics on the day the National Journal rankings are released?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22918556/

"It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq or who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like, who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed," Obama said...

"If you choose change, you will have a nominee who doesn't just tell people what they want to hear," Obama told them. "Poll-tested positions, calculated answers might be how Washington confronts challenges, but it's not how you overcome those challenges; it's not how you inspire our nation to come together behind a common purpose, and it's not what America needs right now. You need a candidate who will tell you the truth."

That's the kind of distinction between the candidates most people have probably been waiting to see.

best case I've seen made for Clinton was the comment by Anne near the end of this thread yesterday at The Carpetbagger Report.

The methodology of the study is kind of weird. The standards it uses to determine which votes were 'conservative' and which were 'liberal' are a little suspect. E.g., candidates voting in favor of a resolution "expressing the sense of Congress that funding should not be cut off for U.S. troops in harm's way" was considered a "conservative" vote for some reason, when all it really means is that any de-funding of the war wouldn't be done in a way that would endanger military personnel in Iraq. In other words, purely symbolic B.S. the GOP introduced just to try to get Democrats to vote against it so they could accuse them of hating the troops.

And the only difference between Hillary and Obama that I can see which accounts for the difference in their rankings is the Kyl-Lieberman thing. Whatever you think about that bill (which also was largely symbolic), it seems weird that it would be enough to provide such separation.

They also appear to factor in missed votes. I.e., you get liberal points by voting in favor of liberal bills, offset by voting for conservative bills. So someone who votes liberal 100% of the time could still be scored as less liberal than someone who votes that way 75% of the time, if the first Senator missed enough votes. Some might think this is fair, but I don't know - the fact that you missed a lot of votes doesn't tell us much about your political orientation, it just tells us you tend to miss a lot of votes. This seems particularly irrelevant in a presidential campaign.

So basically, this is kind of obnoxious on the National Journal's part. They're not in any way enlightening or informing anybody about anything, they're just providing the GOP with a handy anti-Obama talking point.

You might want to take a look behind the numbers. Apparently the rankings were decided by looking at 99 senate votes last year. Of those votes, Barak did not vote on 33 of them (compared to Hillary not voting on 17 of them).

As for the votes they did cast, Hillary voted the "wrong" way 5 times, while Barak voted the "wrong" way once. Of the five times Hillary voted "wrong," one of those times Obama voted the same way, and two of those times (yes, this included Kyl-Lieberman), Obama didn't vote.

I know that all of this actual data will be ignored as each partisan tries to spin the overall results...but it matters to me so I figured I'd share what I found.

joel hanes: I went over and read Anne's comment at carpetbagger, and it does not convince me at all. I'm a feminist woman who has changed jobs a lot in my life trying to make the biggest impact with my career, but to my working class family, it just looks like I can't keep a job. Her list of experience looks like that to me, even though I admire all of it, and it will mean nothing to people outside of high professional circles. That was one of the weakest arguments I've seen, actually. I'm leaning toward Obama, mostly because I knew him when I lived in his state senate district in Illinois, and I know the kind of good work he did then. On the Hillary side is the "knows how to fight" meme, but I thing the link Ezra posted pulls that one back a bit for me.

The removal of the three-way race with Edward's withdrawal makes what was an agonizing choice for a liberal who really wants a Dem. President much easier.

Chris Hayes makes a good case, but ultimately, for me, a progressive/liberal person has to face the real question of who can offer the best prospect for not just Democratic Party governance, but actual liberal/progressive policies that the President will fight for and the country will be in favor of.

On that ground, my vote in Oregon - too late to make a difference in all likelihood - will be for Obama. Since my vote won't count, I'm sending money.

I don't know if this helps or hurts his campaign...

Probably hurt him.

Unlike the Republicans who fall all over each other claiming to be the real conservative, I haven't seen the Dem candiates falling all over themselves claiming to the the *REAL* liberal in the race. They run from the label.

No, it can't be good for Obama

As an Obama supporter, I suppose I should be pleased by the ranking, but the truth is that I hate legislative scorecards-- there are too many variables for them to be of any use. As far as I'm concerned, they make IQ tests look pretty solid.

dk:

Your point is very good, but what's with the twice-in-a-row misspelling of 'Barak'? Is this a statement about the cultural imperialism involved in the anglicization of African-derived names? Or just carelessness?

It'll be fine. It's not great news. But Obama can stick up for himself. I'll be interested to hear how he responds to this, as I'm sure it will come up again and again in the general. (Assuming he makes it of course)

The real challenge for Obama will be to weave this statistic (meaningless though it is) into a broader, coherent story about his political philosophy and ideology.

Given his policy portfolio, they were always going to try to typecast Obama as a liberal. The question is whether he has a coherent response, that brings him successfully back to his message of unity, in a way that has credibility with the voters.

But you know what? This is the central question progressives have with his campaign too. "Explain to me how you have a coherent political philosophy. How does the talk of unity square with the policy agenda?"

What is his response? "I'm awesome"?

I'm an Obama fan but it's tricky.

On the other hand, if Obama's avowed mission is to tell people "this label game is silly and cheapens our discourse" -- well, he could pull that off if anyone could. But it will call attention away from Obama's inherent awesomeness and towards his policy agenda.

Frankly (sorry I'm rambling), if he really wants a mandate, then he doesn't want a "Barack you're awesome" mandate, he wants a "we like your policies" mandate -- so a focus on policies might be A-OK.

Tough to say.

"Senator Obama, you've been ranked the most liberal member of the Senate. Why should non-liberals vote for you?"

"One of the games we play in our politics is a sort of trial by fire. We ask our candidates silly questions, and we say they did a good job if they give some equally silly answer which distracts from the original point. I am here today to say that I am not going to play your game. If anyone is actually interested in what I stand for, they should look at my record. What have I voted for? Then they should look at my policies. Where do I want to take the country? The question you asked is just silly and takes our discourse in the wrong direction. I'm happy to discuss any specific policy idea, or my record, or the Iraq war. But I am not running as a "liberal", I'm running as myself. What I'm trying to say is you've asked a bad question and it takes our discourse in the wrong direction."

No one will ever give this response, which is too bad.

Hmm.. so they cherry picked 99 votes out of the 422 votes done in the 110th congress. They chose multiple votes even on the same bill (hr1495) while not including all the votes.

Yes they do say 'key votes' in their description. But these seems to be more key in making their own political point then in any other sense.

..as far as 'most liberal'. I had read a news story on either cnn.com or msnbc.com about 3 monthes ago saying how many thought the liberal moniker had lost much of its steam, even in the deep reaches of conservative land. They spend some time attempting to conjure what the next Rovian label would be that the Rs would find effective.

That loss of label power, combined with the way Obama answers questions.. I think he'll be fine. From seeing them campaign it seems that Romney would be much more prone to trying to use this then McCain anyway. (Not saying he wont..)

mk..
thing is Obama MIGHT give an answer somewhat like that. Have you seen any of his at length interviews? He gives substantive answers to questions that usually have soundbyte answers. Thats one of the things that originally turned me on to him.

While Clinton gives the same old cludge.. rattles off her voting record.. Obama talkds of how he thinks, why he thinks it, who he agrees with, etc. It will be interesting to see that question stated.

"Liberal" right now codes as "different than Bush" which works in our favor.

People may not consider themselves liberals, but they will probably want a liberal in office because that means not-conservative, and conservative is painful right now. Sometimes binary oversimplification works in our favor.

joel hanes:

I also checked out her comment and the bulk of it seemed to be Hillary's resume. So, you are impressed with Hillary's resume? Were you awestruck by Hillary's website too?

A couple people who have responded to my posting seem to have misunderstood, so I guess I didn't express myself clearly.

Ezra asked for a pointer to the best Clinton advocacy we'd seen. Anne's was it for me; I assumed others would propose other, better ones (not sure why that didn't happen).

But no where in my comment did I indicate that I, personally, am a Clinton supporter because I'm not a Clinton supporter. (If you read that thread at Carpetbagger, you'll see that I'm leaning Obama but think that either is a great candidate, vastly superior to either of the potential Republican opponents. Tonight's debate just cemented those perceptions.)

I know it always happens, but the level of vitriol and taking-things-personally and ad-hominem in the Clinton/Obama threads on many of the progressive blogs makes me sad. Some partisans on either side cannot seem to suffer disagreement without imputing evil motives to those who disagree.

I believe it's because we all know there's so much at stake, and we all have so much emotional investment in winning this time around.

I guess people still don't know why Obama didn't vote for Kyl-Lieberman.

He was in the Senate to vote on the scheduled day, and (I believe) had earlier indicated he opposed it. At the end of the day, Harry Reid tabled it and said it wouldn't come up again "in the near future". On the basis of that, Obama decided he could keep a few appointments the next day in New Hampshire.

The next day Reid called for a vote, with only 2 hours' notice. Obama couldn't make it back in time, so he released a statement opposing K-L.

His other missed votes might be suspicious, but this one isn't.

Plum,

Thanks for the info on the missed vote. I long had wondered why he had missed such an important matter.

Obama can always claim that he hit the wrong button on some of those votes.

I just wish someone would write an article about "progressive Obama" that explains Austan Goolsbee. If Obama's going to win, then progressives need to nail his trousers to the mast on an actually progressive economic stance as soon as possible, or else we'll just find he drifts ever more to the right. The vote on bankruptcy was not an accident, this is a candidate who is deeply committed to Horatio Alger stories and to their dark cousin, the notion that the poor deserve all the trouble they get from corporations...

The vote on bankruptcy was not an accident...

What? He voted against the bill.

Hillary, notably, wasn't there for the vote.