I've seen alot of links lately to Keith Poole's ranking of senators along a liberal-conservative spectrum, which specialists consider much better than the National Journal rankings. Poole's rankings show Kerry as 23rd most liberal of 49 Democrats (plus Jeffreys) for the 108th session (2002-04), 26th out of 50 for the 107th and 17th out of 60 for the 105th-107th (1996-2002) combined (this list includes any Senator who served at least one session). So Kerry does come out over the last eight years as a centrist Democrat (and to the right of Kennedy who ranks fifth, fifth, and fourth on the same rankings).
I thought it'd be interesting to look at the Democratic VP candidates. Here are their rankings:
Bayh 41 42 46
Cleland na 45 44
Edwards 21 37 45
Feinstein 30 41 42
Graham 9 34 43
Landrieu 45 44 52
Nelson 32 36 50
It's striking that a/they're all very much to the conservative end of the Democratic spectrum (again showing the current pragmatism of the Democrats - could you imagine a GOP VP list with Chafee, Snowe and Collins?); b/and it's striking how hostile Kossacks are to Bayh though he's slightly less conservative than Landrieu and Cleland and about the same as Nelson. Also striking how running for the president pushed Edwards and especially Graham rather dramatically to the left.