Obama's "Most Liberal" Rating

[Agnapostate]

This was brought up by a colleague of mine elsewhere, and I was interested in gauging opinions regarding it here. Regarding Barack Obama's rating as the "most liberal" member of the Senate, (which is frequently mentioned by the McCain camp), what of the fact that Democratic presidential candidates may skew left on National Journal's rankings due to their larger number of missed votes, and consequent missed opportunities to vote "yea" on things that would shift them right (e.g. Obama missing the vote on the Peru trade agreement he publicly supported)?

There's also the fact that voting records don't coincide perfectly with ideological beliefs. For instance, Chris Dodd was ranked "23rd most liberal" for casting four "conservative" votes last year. Two of those were where he voted against setting a timetable for Iraq... because he wanted to set an even more aggressive timetable.

 

[vyo476]

Politics are qualitative, not quantitative. That's why polls, statistical ratings, and all that other junk is just noise. 'Nuff said.