How could this be? Are the other candidates offering the same options but have more likable personalities? I wish. The other candidates, with the exception of Mike Gravel, do not have solutions for these problems that are along the lines of those held by the average American. Almost a year after the Democrats were elected on a mandate to end the Iraq war they've still done absolutely nothing. Wait, no, that's not true, they gave it more funding. The front runner of the Democratic party is Hillary Clinton, a former board member of Wal-Mart, who doesn't support single-payer healthcare (any reference she makes to it refers to a pathetic subsidization plan for low-income Americans, whoop-di-do), describes herself as an "an emphatic, unwavering supporter of Israel's safety and security" showing that she has no grasp on events in the Middle East, has argued that we must keep "all options" on the table against Iran, voted for the Patriot Act, introduced the Flag Protection Act of 2005 which would require a $100,000 fine and a year in jail for the act of burning a U.S. flag, supports the death penalty, supports the Defense of Marriage Act which recogizes that the federal government only considers marriage to be between a man and a woman, and refused to label herself as a "liberal" in the CNN-Youtube debate.
"THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GETTING AFTER 8 YEARS OF BUSH!?!" you ask. Yes, this is how the game is played. See, it's not Clinton's progressive political positions which have enabled her to grab the limelight for the Democratic nomination, it's her conservative positions. She pleases the big business and other conservative interests and is able to raise much more money. With this money and with support from the mainstream media the idea that she is a Democratic frontrunner is hammered into the public. The public, in turn, begins to believe it, and assumes that the reason she is the frontrunner is because others who have spent more time researching and who had time to watch the debates thought that she did the best and so they, in turn, support her, thereby completing the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here, let me show you some graphs. What I've done is take the Democratic presidential hopefuls and made graphs showing the amount of money that they've raised in comparison to their congressional scorecard ratings from various advocacy groups. It should be noted that I only did this for Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Kucinich, and Biden because they are the only people who were in the Senate or the House at the time that the 2006 congressional reports were published. I could have taken data from past congressional scorecards to include the other candidates, but since the issues were different in different years it's misleading to compare them. Anyway, what you will see is that the more progressive a candidate is, the less money they have raised (click on any graph if you'd like to see a larger version).
First, let's look at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ratings¹:
This one is very dramatic.
Now the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) ratings²:
And the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) ratings³:
And finally, Peace Action West (PAW)4:
Another dramtic difference.
Now, just for comparison, let's look at what the conservative group American Conservative Union (ACU) said5:
So as you can plainly see, the more conservative a Democratic candidate's views are, the more money they raise and the more they are considered the Democratic frontrunners. Something must be done about this because America and the world cannot stand to have another 4 years of the same old conservative policies, regardless of whether they are carried out by Republicans or Democrats. This blog's purpose is to hope to help in that effort.
† Amount of money currently raised comes from http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/money/dems.raised.html
¹http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?page=voteList
²http://www.hrc.org/Content/NavigationMenu/HRC/Get_Informed/Congress_and_Scorecard/Index.htm
³http://www.lcv.org/scorecard/
4http://www.peaceactionwest.org/downloads/PeaceActionScorecardLowRes.pdf
5http://www.acuratings.org/
2 comments:
I'm not a fan of Clinton or Obama's campaigns, but your own charts demonstrate how absurd your argument is. Clinton and Obama have 90% or better from the HRCF, which represent's the country's most mistrusted and vilified minority? They do as well from the LCV? And you think this shows them the same as Bush? This is Naderite irrationality all over again.
The only thing your charts show is that Dennis K. can't raise money. You assume that is because he is too liberal. Really? Could it not also be that he is poor on the stump, lacking charisma, diffident about fundraising, and not likely to win?
In 2000, enough people with progressive views on policy were seduced by the Reaganesque strategy of portraying candidate choice as a consumerist "statement" of personal identity to splinter the vote and hand the government over to the right-wing. Don't be such a dupe again.
That's interesting that in your criticism of my charts you don't mention those pertaining to the views of the ACLU and PAW. I wonder what the reason for that might be....
And besides, who cares about charts? Advocacy groups are not the best way to evaluate a candidate's positions. It's much more accurate and direct to simply look at their campaign platform. Can you tell me what's so progressive about either Clinton or Obama's campaign? Besides empty statements about "making life better for the average American" what do they actually propose to do? If you could convince me that they weren't simply more of the same then you could save me a lot of time that I might otherwise spend on this blog.
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