Those conservative/liberal rankings are a heap of shit.

[cali]

I've been saying this for years. And the silly graphs are just as dumb. Last night I noticed a post from someone claiming Bernie isn't really a liberal because National Journal rates him as the 37th most liberal Senator. You know who the NJ rates as the most liberal? Charles Schumer in a tie with Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy. Elizabeth Warren isn't in the top 15, but Debby Stabenow is.

Crazy, huh? Bullshit, yeah. (on the other hand, this could be useful for the Sanders campaign, whenever someone starts railing about how he's out of touch and the most liberal, blah, out of touch, blah, blah; they can always point to this crap)


National Journal, as is its wont, has released its latest round of rankings in an effort to determine who are the most liberal and most conservative members of Congress. Congratulations to those senators and representatives who have won these honors. I'd list them, but they are a range of fairly uninteresting people (Idaho Republican Sen. James Risch) or multiple people tied for first. The "most liberal representative" is actually a seven-way tie for the top spot.

Here's something even crazier. National Journal would have you believe that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) -- a self-described socialist who often seems to be one of the few senators who authentically wants to not gut Social Security in some way -- is the 37th most liberal senator. That's just wildly wrong! For Pete's sake, the man wrote a piece for The Huffington Post titled "What Can We Learn From Denmark?" I think that if a United States senator openly advocates for Scandinavian-style social democracy, you are obligated to give him at least two kajillion "liberal points."

So it's not for the first time that I've wondered, What is the use of these rankings, actually? Based on the "news" generated by the story -- and yes, those scare-quotes are intentional -- not much:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/national-journal-rankings_n_4746688.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. They're trying to pack too much information into a single 'point', and in so doing, are ranking

both completely inconsequential statements and votes in with highly critical ones and giving them equal weight. Also, a Kucinich type Dem and a Lieberman type get the same weight for a given vote that they agree on, even if they voted for vastly different reasons.

It's like claiming Ron or Rand Paul is 'liberal' because they vote against the Federal drug war, while ignoring the fact that they do it because they believe the states should run the drug war.

[HereSince1628]

9. It's an attempt to steal the power of numbers

Numbers seem so useful, math is so logical,

Setting aside which issues or policy or voting positions are being considered...which is in itself a frequent act of cherry-picking
The scores are often presented as averages of measurement for which division is an invalid operation

Just because we can count things doesn't mean that every mathematical operation can and should be performed upon them. The introduction of weighting on particular questions destroys being able to consider the relative distance between issues as being at all equivalent.

These scores also reduce all representation of 'range' of the individual elements In the flawed methods involved, an extremely conservative element can be balanced by an extremely liberal element, the result looks to all intent the same as the balance between two identical scores at the middle. But the first would suggest a politicians voting is erratic, sometimes extreme, and the other suggests a politicians voting is very consistently moderate.

Shouldn't we be contemplating the consistency of our politicians voting? Why is that -NEVER- included in these silly scores?

[fadedrose]

2. Somehow someway

we have to get some people with standing to go on some TV shows and explain what European/Canadian socialism is like, and it's not communism, where religion, freedom of speech, news, and ownership of homes and property was against the law.

People have to understand that there are stock markets in every country, people own businesses, homes, property, etc., and the governments usually step in with retirement plans, medicine and health care, education and jails, (don't think they have jails and colleges for profit)..One of our candidate's husband has/sold his interest in colleges for profit recently...hmm. That's pure and simple capitalism.

We already have partial socialism with Social Security and the Reps have been trying to destroy it since FDR started it, and if they did manage to do it, their elderly constituents would raise bloody hell. National Parks, same thing. Reps have been trying to privatize them to get the natural resources that lie within.

More talk needed everywhere about socialism.

[liberal N proud]

3. Oh my!

[JaneyVee]

4. This one seems much more accurate:

Bernie Sanders:




Link http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/bernie_sanders.htm

[cali]

5. they are all largely meaningless- and I've long criticized

that one as well- not that ontheissues, can't be of some value, particularly with regard to specific votes and links.

[stillwaiting]

6. The use of the rankings is to confuse, distract, and distort the conversation.

And, I think they do a marvelous job at it.

The "on the issues" rankings continues to get posted around here like it's a serious and legitimate barometer of a politician's political viewpoints. It definitely causes a lot of confusion.

"on the issues" uses what a politician SAYS as a huge part of where they get ranked, and that is just not a reliable way to gauge where a politician stands politically (unless they are straight-up and honest all of the time like Bernie and their words matches their actions - super rare).

[Renew Deal]

7. Perception vs reality

Maybe people are spending more time I what Sanders says vs what he does.

[cali]

8. could you clarify? Not quite sure what you are trying to say

[truebluegreen]

10. It's funny how the Democratic nominee is tagged

as the most liberal senator evah...John Kerry and Obama? Really? But this is a new twist--Bernie isn't really a liberal? Hilarious.

Somewhat OT, but I wonder if the crazed righties' insistence that Obama is a "socialist" will have inoculated a whole generation against knee-jerk fear of socialism....I've heard people on this board claim that America will never elect a socialist and therefore Bernie has no chance but I think for many that term doesn't carry the weight it once did (and yes I am aware that he calls himself a democratic socialist).

[leveymg]

11. These "liberal-conservative" scales do not weigh foreign policy issues at all. n/t