No doubt by now you have heard the Republican talking point that John Kerry is the most liberal member of the Senate and John Edwards is the 4th most liberal senator. President Bush and his cohorts have certainly enjoyed using this National Journal rating to lambast Senator Kerry. You might have even seen Jon Stewart tear into Congressman Henry Bonilla for this claim. Well, it turns out Stewart had it all right at the time, and not the mainstream media that continued to repeat the Republican talking point.

An interesting article today from The National Journal, Charles Green
debunks this myth that John Kerry is an uber-liberal. Here's what they write:

In short, our magazine -- or, more precisely, our annual congressional vote ratings edition -- has become a Republican talking point in the 2004 presidential campaign. And that's been a fascinating, and disconcerting, experience. Fascinating because we're more used to being cited in congressional hearings than on the Today show. Disconcerting because the shorthand used to describe our ratings of Kerry and Edwards is sometimes misleading -- or just plain wrong [italics added].

Last November and December, as we have for the past 23 years, National Journal editors and reporters began preparing for the magazine's annual vote ratings of members of Congress. Each year, we pick several dozen votes in three broad issue areas -- economic, social, and foreign -- and identify yea and nay positions as representing a "conservative" or "liberal" stance. Members are then ranked from the most liberal to the most conservative in each issue area. Members also receive a composite liberal score and a composite conservative score -- basically an average of their issue-based scores.

When the tabulations came in for 2003, John Kerry had the highest composite liberal score of any senator.

But there was an asterisk. As with other lawmakers who were running for president, Kerry missed a lot of votes in 2003 -- 37 of the 62 that were being used in the vote ratings. He didn't vote often enough to merit scores in the social-policy and foreign-affairs categories. (Under our system, a member has to participate in at least half the votes in a category to receive a score in that category.) He did cast enough votes (19 of 32) in the economic category to get a rating. On those votes, Kerry took the "liberal" position every time.

That was the basis for Kerry's receiving a composite liberal score for 2003 that was higher than any other senator's score.

It doesn't just end here, though. Green, not bowing to the ferocious spin machine that is the GOP, continues to set the record straight.

Occasionally, Republicans would assert that Kerry had been ranked the most liberal senator on the basis of his entire Senate career.

Vice President Cheney made such a claim at a campaign appearance in Minnesota this month. "John Kerry is, by National Journal ratings, the most liberal member of the United States Senate," Cheney said. "Ted Kennedy is the more conservative of the two senators from Massachusetts. It's true. All you've got to do is go look at the ratings system. And that captures a lot, I think, in terms of somebody's philosophy. And it's not based on one vote, or one year; it's based on 20 years of service in the United States Senate."

But if the standard is votes over a lifetime, Kerry isn't the most liberal senator. By that measure, Kerry is the 11th-most-liberal senator, coming in below such Democrats as Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, Barbara Boxer of California, and, yes, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, according to a National Journal analysis published in March.

John Edwards, who was ranked the fourth-most-liberal senator in 2003 (and who also missed many votes that year), is the 27th-most-liberal senator based on votes over his career.

Using this method, John Kerry is certainly not the most liberal Senator, and John Edwards is in fact on the conservative side of the party!

I would suggest you pass this article on to people who you know who are easily affected by the spin. It's one thing to see Jon Stewart talk about this (even though I think of him as television's top political analyst, many still think of him as a mere comedian), but for the actual publication that came up with these rankings to contradict the right wing spin is far more meaningful.