Liberal/conservative rankings

I'll be watching the debate tonight with my daughter, so it's not an occasion for drinking games, but if it were, a good one would be to drink whenever Bush mentions that the National Journal ranked Kerry the most liberal Senator.

This reminded me that for many months I've intended to call attention to a fabulous database that attempts to develop a more iterative and open way of ranking the voting records of members of Congress: http://progressivepunch.org/. Rather than choosing votes, this system takes any vote on which a majority of "hard-core progressives" votes in one way, and ranks them and others in relation to the positions of that hard core. There's a bit of arbitrariness in the choice of the hard-core, but it still takes a little of the human judgment out of the equation. And, more interestingly, one could open up the system and rank members based on, say, all the Senators from the Northeast, or some other choice.

In any event, Kerry's ratings under this system are very interesting (This probably won't paste in neatly, so click here , scroll down to number 24, and click to see Kerry's rank on a dozen different issues. Only on Housing does he rank near the most liberal, and on issues of war and peace and justice, he is near the middle of the Senate:

ALL ISSUE CATEGORIES Rank Kerry, John (Sen - D) Progressive Score (%) Rank


All issues 85.72 24/100

Aid to Less Advantaged People, at Home & Abroad (15 subcategories) 71.25 45/100



Corporate Subsidies (12 subcategories) 71.43 17/100T



Education, Humanities, & the Arts (2 subcategories) 72.73 46/100



Environment (12 subcategories) 82.00 19/100



Fair Taxation (6 subcategories) 93.33 25/100T



Family Planning (2 subcategories) 28.57 53/100



Government Checks on Corporate Power (21 subcategories) 76.00 36/100



Health Care (12 subcategories) 52.00 46/100



Housing (2 subcategories) 100.00 1/89T



Human Rights & Civil Liberties (6 subcategories) 56.52 46/100



Justice for All: Civil and Criminal (7 subcategories) 55.00 45/100



Labor Rights (6 subcategories) 60.47 38/100



Making Government Work for Everyone, Not Just the Rich or Powerful (10 subcategories) 67.65 46/100



War & Peace (14 subcategories) 40.91 46/100T