Who are the most progressive / liberal / effective Elected Officials?

[NAO]

Does anybody have a list? Last fall, they said Kerry and Edwards were the "2nd and 4th most liberal members of Congress".

But who really are the Outstanding Progressive Politicians right now? Has anyone scored them on a objective scale based on legislation? Or scored them on a subjective scale based on professed ideology?

My notions, just from a spontaneous guess:

the late Paul Wellstone
Dennis Kucinich
John Conyers
Maxine Waters
Cynthia McKinney
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Tom Harkin
Nancy Pelosi


Any links or references to these type of lists?

Does anyone care to suggest more names from gut feeling or intuition?

[Totally Committed]

1. I agree with a lot on your list (not all), but no Barbara Boxer? n/t

[newswolf56]

18. My stand on Boxer is an enigma even to myself. I applauded her...

infinitely courageous refusal to allow the 2004 elections to go unchallenged, and I applaud many of her other stances as well, but I am appalled by the absolutist venom of her relentless opposition to the private ownership of firearms.

Boxer's "Women Against Guns" organization of the 1980s and early 1990s was a major contributor to the merger of feminism with the cause of forcible disarmament -- the merger that transformed the anti-gun movement from a small and mostly powerless band of fringe lunatics into a major (and singularly tyrannical) force in U.S. politics.

So I remain of two minds about Boxer -- especially since one of my personal slogans is "Real Leftists Own Guns."

But if Boxer would repudiate her position that civilians should not be allowed firearms under any circumstances -- that only soldiers, cops and secret police should be allowed them -- I would unabashedly support her for any office she chose to seek.

[jonnyblitz]

2. is bernie sanders effective? i like him whether he is or not.

[WestHoustonDem]

3. Bernie Sanders! n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

4. If professed ideology is a measure, you'd have to add

Jesse Jackson, Wesley Clark, and Al Sharpton.

[Mojambo]

5. Jim McDermott has been pretty great. n/t

[tofubo]

6. the ones elected in 2006 to replace all the repubs and apologist dems n/t

[AntiCoup2K4]

7. Kerry and Pelosi don't belong on this list.

Kerry voted with the neocons from the Coup until November 2004 under the excuse of "centrism" for the sake of "electability". And Spineless Nancy tried to shove Tim "9-11 coverup" Roemer down the throats of the DNC.

Neither of them are worthy of comparisons to Wellstone, Conyers, Barbara Boxer, Cynthia McKinney, Jim McDermott, or Dennis Kucinich, to name a few.

[emulatorloo]

9. ADA and other groups disagree w you

pelosi 94 kerry 92

[emulatorloo]

8. Check out ADA lifetime ratings

http://www.adaction.org/news.htm

For house:

http://www.adaction.org/hor.htm

For senate:

http://www.adaction.org/sen.htm

Some of the pages giving a 404 not found error. . .but for the ones that are there:

Paul Wellstone 99
Dennis Kucinich 90
John Conyers 89
Maxine Waters
Cynthia McKinney
Ted Kennedy 90
John Kerry 92
Tom Harkin 92
Nancy Pelosi


From about page:

<snip>

ADA is America's oldest independent liberal lobbying organization. In the spirit of the New Deal and ADA founders Eleanor Roosevelt, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and former Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey we lobby through coalition partnerships, through direct advocacy, and through the media. Our lobbying philosophy is based on democratic action - motivating our grassroots members to lobby their senators and representatives as constituent-advocates. With 65,000 members nationwide, numerous state and local chapters, and its headquarters in the District of Colombia actively engaging in the political process, ADA continually strives to push for democratic and progressive values and ideals in American policy. Our founders included Eleanor Roosevelt, labor leader Walter Reuther, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

<snip>

[OKNancy]

11. I always uses ADA as a reference

As you quoted from their page, they are the oldest and IMO they do a great job.

For those unfamiliar with their methods, they have twenty votes that they decide represent the liberal viewpoint and then score the official based on the votes.

A lot of DUers, before they spout off about DINOs, need to check the ADA site before they embarrass themselves.

[AntiCoup2K4]

13. And who the fuck is the ADA?

I see a three letter acronym dragged out everytime somebody wants to defend the supposed "liberalism" of their favorite DLC'er, but never any explanation of who the ADA is, who they represent, or how they arrive at their numbers. Throwing out the names of long dead people like Eleanor Roosevelt or Hubert Humphrey means nothing. The Gallup Poll used to be reputable as well, but it's a right wing whore fraud now.

Anyway, fuck manipulated polls and ratings. I go by what I observe myself. And I've observed a spineless jellyfish named Pelosi who tried to put the DNC in the hands of a liar who helped the Bush criminals coverup the mass murder of 3000 Americans. I observed the same gutless wonder do all she could to prevent any sort of inquiry into voter fraud.

If she's a progressive, I'm Al From.

[emulatorloo]

14. go to their about page - Dead Eleanor Roosevelt was a founder

http://www.adaction.org/about.htm

of the many things they do they study voting records and rank them. they don't "manipulate polls"

[newswolf56]

10. John Edwards' denunciation of U.S. poverty (and the policies...

that deliberately impoverish on an ever-expanding number of people and just-as-deliberately make poverty itself an ever-more-fatal condition) is Leftist in the very best and ultimate sense of the term: recognition of the historical truth of class struggle -- the wellspring of all other Leftist principles.

I know Edwards has been associated with the DLC and its core doctrines: money supremacy and Reaganoid trickle-down economics. But Edwards' economic position today -- essentially a demand for resurrection of the New Deal -- is the antithesis of the DLC's all-power-to-the-corporations stance. Moreover Edwards is the only leading Democrat who dares talk about America's rapidly worsening socioeconomic reality: the fact that (if the fat-cat capitalists have their way) what we saw in New Orleans last month will be all of America tomorrow.

Out from under the shadow of Kerry (who was the quintessential DLC candidate) -- also and perhaps even more importantly out from under the suffocating influence of the smugly bourgeois Democratic elite that gives not a Marie Antoinette cake-crumb about the worsening impoverishment of America's working families and the deliberately intensifying wretchedness of the poor, the disabled and the limited-income elderly -- Edwards has matured into a leader who might truly be a worthy successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt: America's greatest president ever, and the most effective progressive in our national history.

[OKNancy]

12. Kerry was not a "DLC" candidate

and Edwards voted for the Iraq war resolution, which is the very same thing people around here seem to forget when they bash Hillary Clinton but praise Edwards.

( I actually like Edwards FWIW )

[AntiCoup2K4]

15. How can you say Kerry wasn't the DLC candidate?

He is a DLC'er. The primaries were manipulated every way from Sunday so he would emerge the "winner". Vil-SUCK was rewarded greatly for his manipulation of Iowa. DLC handlers restrained Kerry from fighting back against the Swift Boat Assholes. And let's not forget his string of right wing war agenda promoting votes between 2000 and the November election.

Only Kerry himself knows if he ever had an intention of winning the election to begin with. But the DLC who controlled his campaign KNEW they were throwing the game. And at best, Kerry unwittingly let them do it.

[emulatorloo]

16. Repeating wild unsubstantiated claims over and over doesn't make them true

Although I guess persistence and loudness does count on the internets.

[newswolf56]

17. Good point! But I am well aware Edwards (and Hillary) voted for...

the war resolution, something I hold against neither candidate: history demonstrates beyond any doubt that aggressive defense against the nearly 1400-year-old menace of Jihadist terrorism is essential to the survival of American liberty and Western Civilization. Thus I assume the good intentions of Edwards, Clinton and most of the other Democrats who so voted -- especially as it now becomes ever more apparent they were deliberately and thoroughly duped by the Bush/Goebbels Big Lie.

Bottom line -- and I have no doubt I will be resoundingly flamed for this -- the initial opposition to the Iraq War (and much of the subsequent hostility toward Edwards, Clinton et al) was/is knee-jerk pacifism: an affliction that has cost the Democratic Party ruinous losses of votes since the aftermath of Vietnam, an ideology that whether as a Leftist or a Regular Army veteran I cannot possibly embrace.

Based on what was known at the time, the pro-war votes of Edwards, Kerry, Clinton and others were wholly justified: Bush deceived Congress just as brazenly as LBJ did 40 years ago with the wholly manufactured, wholly bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident.

As to Kerry's connection to the DLC, Google "dlc kerry" and scroll thoroughly: it has been my contention since 2004 that Kerry's elitist indifference to the ongoing and deliberate disempowerment of America's working families and poor -- an indifference obviously mandated by the capitalism-can-do-no-wrong ideology of the DLC -- is what cost Kerry the votes that would have overcome the election fraud in Ohio and elsewhere.