Sen. Boren just reiterated the false claim that Sen. Obama is the most liberal Senator:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Democratic Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma said Tuesday Barack Obama is "the most liberal senator" in Congress and he has no intention of endorsing him for the White House.
However, Boren will vote for Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August and will vote Democratic on Nov. 4.
"I think this is an important time for our country," Boren said in a telephone interview. "We're facing a terrible economic downturn. We have high gasoline prices. We have problems in our foreign policy. That's why I think it's important."
Boren, the lone Democrat in Oklahoma's congressional delegate, said that while Obama has talked about working with Republicans, "unfortunately, his record does not reflect working in a bipartisan fashion."
Where did this claim come from? Likely from the National Journal:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings.
http://nj.nationaljournal.com/...
By some strange coincidence, Sen. Kerry was the National Journal's "most liberal Senator" in 2003.
It's clear this is a rigged rating. As proof, here is an objective rating scale based purely on mathematical analysis:
http://voteview.com/...
(Hat tip to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ for linking to this site).
This scale is purely objective - it orders Senators based purely on their voting record and assumes only that their vote is determined by where they place on a single scale, which for want of better terminology can be called liberal/conservative. If you look at the rankings they make intuitive sense: Feingold as most liberal and Demint as most conservative are not going to raise any eyebrows.
Note that the rankings places Sen. Obama 11th most liberal in the most recent Senate. Note also how conservative Sen. McCain's voting record has been - he was the 8th most conservative Senator in the 110th Senate. In the 109th Senate McCain was the second most conservative senator after only Sen. Kyl:
http://voteview.com/...
Please contact Sen. Boren and tell him he is wrong! And use this ranking to put the lie to Sen. McCain's claim of "moderation" - in fact over the last few years he has had among the most conservative voting records in the Senate.
Update: Here's a good example of how distorted the National Journal's ranking is:
Obama voted "Y" on the following bill (Hillary voted "No"), thus earning him a "more liberal" record:
Establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators. January 18. (27-71) C-1
Here's the list of votes the National Journal used:
http://nj.nationaljournal.com/...