When Kerry Was Liberal

The Bush campaign and its conservative patrons want you to know: John Kerry is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. More liberal than Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, the Generation GOP website crows. The Democrats couldn't have picked a more leftwing presidential candidate if they'd nominated Dennis Kucinich, the Washington Times reports.

What's going on here?

The "most liberal" label comes from a credible source: the National Journal, bible of Beltway wonks. Guided by contributing editor and CNN commentator William Schneider, the National Journal has been using the same complicated, computerized process to rank "conservative" and "liberal" members of Congress since 1981.

But if Kerry is so liberal, why did Kucinich, Howard Dean, and even John Edwards attract more support from labor, peace activists, and other groups traditionally associated with the left? Why did Democratic Party leaders applaud when these "unelectable" progressives gave way to the more mainstream, moderate Kerry?

Using a different ranking system, the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action put Kerry at number twenty-five among Senate liberals in 2003. (Ted Kennedy ranked number five.) Nor does Kerry make the ADA's lifetime top-ten list of Senate liberals, headed by the late Paul Wellstone at number one.

Jeff Blodgett runs Wellstone Action, a group that trains political organizers and promotes progressive politics.

"Paul saw himself as part of a movement, connected to organizations around the country," Blodgett says. Wellstone proposed legislation that he knew would not pass, like a single-payer health insurance bill "just because he thought it should be part of the debate." More than anything he saw himself as an activist and a "voice for the voiceless," Blodgett says.

The same can hardly be said of John Kerry. He endorsed the idea of campaign finance reform but spent heavily to drive away potential opponents in his reelection campaigns. And he annoyed progressives in Massachusetts with his opposition to single-payer health care and his unenthusiastic support for raising the minimum wage--a major cause of his colleague Ted Kennedy. Kerry also supported the welfare reform bill that did away with Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- a vote that more than anything divided the Wellstone liberals from the Clinton New Democrats.

A couple of things to know about the National Journal rankings: Kerry rated number one last year for the first time in more than a decade. Not coincidentally, 2003 was also the year he missed thirty-seven of the sixty-two votes tallied in the ranking process because he was out on the campaign trail.

What was not included in the National Journal rankings is at least as important as what was. The Journal looks at votes cast by Senators and Representatives in three areas: economic, social, and foreign policy. Kerry missed all the 2003 votes in two of the three categories. So his ranking is based entirely on economic policy. Trade, an area where Kerry has always been at odds with the Democratic base, barely showed up on the radar screen. Some of the most significant votes he cast on the issue -- for NAFTA, Fast Track, and normal trade relations with China -- did not take place in 2003. On the most important trade votes in 2003, such as dropping trade barriers with Africa and the Caribbean, and free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, Kerry was a no-show.

Kerry isn't the only one whose record seems distorted in the National Journal. Some of the most conservative members of Congress found themselves rated as moderates because of their votes opposing the President's Medicare plan, supplemental appropriations for the reconstruction of Iraq, and the drug war in South America, all of which they viewed as wasteful government spending. Representative Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, a proud rightwinger who was rated among the moderates in 2003, told the National Journal it should change its ratings system.