Legal Commentary

Regardless of his ranking among Senate liberals, Obama is the Most Dangerous Liberal in America

By Beldar

Ramesh Ponnuru on The Corner links Josh Patashnik at The New Republic, who ? contra the ranking by National Journal, which tagged Obama as the "Most Liberal Senator of 2007" ? links a "separate and more elaborate ranking system, developed by highly regarded political scientists Jeff Lewis and Keith Poole," which asserts that Obama is merely "the 11th most liberal senator in 2007 and 21st most liberal in the previous Congress." Patashnik's key sentence (link in original, bold-face mine):

Obama clearly belongs to the party's liberal wing rather than its centrist contingent ? he's essentially said as much ? but he's not close to being the Senate's left-most member.

Most of Patashnik's piece is devoted to criticizing the National Journal's system for ranking, and some of his criticisms are probably valid. I'm not embracing that system, nor the Lewis and Poole system, and indeed, I'm intensely skeptical of them both.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on July 29, 2008 (boomark / email).