In an interview with the Kansas City Star, reporter Dave Helling asked McCain whether he would really characterize Obama as an "extremist."McCain doesn't know, because McCain has no idea what socialism is, just like no Republicans have the slightest clue, they just throw around those terms to attack their opponents.
McCain's reply: "That's his voting record. All I said was his voting record -- and that is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont."
Helling then asked if McCain actually thinks Obama is a socialist. "Oh I don't know," McCain answered.
First, I have to say, that there are no "extremist" elected officials in Congress, at least not on the liberal side of the spectrum, for the obvious reason that they would be considered "extremist". Apparently "extremist" to McCain is categorized as anyone who supports the minimum wage, wants to get out of Iraq, and doesn't support outrageous tax cuts for the rich while the middle class falls apart. By McCain's definition, the vast majority of Americans are extremists, which begs the question, who are they extremists to? If the mainstream is extremist, the only people who will view that as extremist are those who actually are extremists, or those to the hard right, like McCain, Bush, and a sizable portion of the Republican Party who want more war, more corporate handouts, less civil liberties, less social services, etc, all things that fall on the fringes of public opinion. Check out this Daily Kos diary from yesterday which kind of hits on this same point, of how the media and the Republicans never stop trying to frame uncontroversial, common sense policies as "far left" or "extremist", or "socialist", which apparently now is beyond extremism.
Secondly, he says Obama's voting record is to the left of Bernie Sanders, which it is not. McCain is undoubtedly using the numbers from the debunked National Journal ratings, which coincidentally always single out the current Democratic nominee as that year's most liberal member of Congress. In 2004 it was John Kerry, and now it is Obama. Weird, huh? Yeah, apparently Obama and Kerry are more liberal than progressive champion Russ Feingold, and yes, socialist Bernie Sanders. Bottom line, it's bullshit. The rankings are meant to create anti-Democrat talking points for Republicans. Bush-Cheney jumped all over the announcement in 2004 to attack Kerry, and McCain is using the same bullshit "ranking" this time around. You can be sure that whoever the Democrats nominate in 2016 will also be the "most liberal" member of Congress, assuming they are a senator. I prefer the much more accurate Irregular Times (check here for House rankings) ratings on the Progressive Patriots website. These ratings pass the reality test, because obvious indicators are in line with common sense. Feingold is on top. Obama is "pretty darned progressive", but doesn't rank quite as progressive as Sanders. Hillary ranks to the right of Obama in the "moderately progressive" category. Those rankings make sense, there are no red flags, whereas in the National Journal rankings there are nothing but red flags.
Alright, so McCain is full of shit, Obama isn't more liberal than the socialist. McCain also doesn't seem to understand how the legislative process works, because "extremist" bills, bills so far from mainstream acceptability, will never come to a vote in the Senate, and so neither Obama, nor Sanders, would ever have the opportunity to cast such an "extremist" vote. Anyone who thinks that any mainstream Democrats are extremist are obviously very very conservative, and either complete idiots, or very disingenuous. I don't know which McCain is here, because he has proven himself both ignorant and disingenuous in the past (daily), so really it could be either-or on this one (or maybe both).
In response to the Republicans trying to demonize socialism, refer to my blog from Wednesday.
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