>>What invigorates me most about Obama is his obvious intelligence and his apparent willingness to listen to new evidence and change his mind based on it. After the current administration, I consider that an absolute necessity.
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>Sure, he's intelligent and well-spoken. But if he's so willing to reach across the aisle and be bipartisan, why is he ranked as the most liberal and least bipartisan Senator?

I haven't seen the "least bipartisan" thing before, so a cite would be nice. I went out and researched the "most liberal" accusation a few weeks ago for a discussion elsewhere. Here's what I found:

I went looking for ratings of "liberalness" that were perhaps from more generally respected sources. Here's the ADA (absolutely liberal, but been around a long time). For 2007, they gave Obama a 75% rating (while noting that missing a lot of votes would lower his score). A
quick glance shows lots of higher numbers. For 2006, they gave him a 95% rating, but again a quick glance shows plenty of 100%. In 2005, he did get 100% from the ADA, but so did 21 other senators, so it's hard to argue that he's the _most_ liberal.

Next, I went to the National Journal, which claims to be non-partisan. This is apparently where the "most liberal" label came from. They list Obama as #1 for 2007, with a score of 95.5. Again, here, missing votes seems to have played a role, but in the opposite direction as with the ADA, since this one does a ratio based on which votes were cast. Unfortunately, their earlier ratings aren't available for free, but they do say that he was #16 (2005) and #10 (2006) in his first two years.

To get the other side, I went to the American Conservative Union. For 2007, Obama has a score of 7; for 2006, it was 8. A glance through the ratings shows plenty of 0's and some 4's, so apparently Obama wasn't the least conservative.

My conclusion from all this is that yes, Obama is definitely on the liberal side (as defined in the US), but that it's hard to support the argument that he is "the most liberal" senator.


>Your honesty is appreciated and I can understand your position based on your politics. I don't think McCain supporters are as cut and dried. First off, I see no one here who is an enthusiastic McCain supporter; rather, I see a bunch of conservatives and GOPers wishing they had a better choice and holding their collective noses. Obama is the most liberal of the starting seven of Dems, being behind only Dennis Kucinich.
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>The problem for non-Democrats is that the Democrats were so polarized against everything GOP for so many years that there's no way a candidate remotely palatable to the GOP was going to be nominated. Personally, I may have voted for Bill Richardson. But he was toast in the process because he wasn't liberal enough to be nominated.

I leaned toward Richardson initially. However, my brother lives in New Mexico and said that he has not been an effective governor.

I wasn't really thrilled with any of the field, but we've made running for office, especially President, so hard and unpleasant that I suspect those who make the best President won't (maybe even can't) run. Also, unfortunately, the skills that get you elected aren't necessarily those that make you a good President.

All that said, Obama has grown on me considerably through this campaign. I think his positive message is an important one that we need right now. I also, in general, favor meritocracy and want the president to be one of the smartest kids in the class.

Tamar