Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
The DLC's From and Reed, claiming Kerry as one of their own, point to a series of votes from the mid-1990s in which Kerry separated himself from more liberal members of his party. In addition to Kerry's 1996 vote on welfare reform, they cite his 1994 role in passing legislation that put 100,000 cops on the street, his vote for NAFTA and other trade measures, and his support for the balanced-budget agreement Bill Clinton struck with congressional Republicans in 1997.
That's not to say that Kerry is a conservative. While Kerry was attacked from the left during the primaries -- particularly for voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq and for refusing to consider a broader repeal of Bush's tax cuts -- his overall Senate record is aligned closely with all of the usual Democratic Party causes.
Kerry has voted for abortion rights and, by and large, against the death penalty. He has a solid if not spectacular record on labor, and a near-perfect record with the NAACP. In 1996, he was one of only 14 senators who opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, the constitutionally questionable measure that says no state can be required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state.
On Supreme Court nominees, Kerry has been reliably liberal. Although he voted to confirm Antonin Scalia, who sailed through the Senate on a unanimous vote in 1986, Kerry voted against the confirmations of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and David Souter, and he voted against William Rehnquist's elevation to chief justice. Like most Democrats, Kerry voted against John Ashcroft's confirmation as attorney general.
Kerry's environmental record is also strongly liberal. He has been a leader in the fight against pollution and global warming, and he has helped prevent oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Until 2003 -- when missed votes cost him points -- Kerry won high scores from the League of Conservation Voters. Americans for Democratic Action gives Kerry a lifetime ranking of 92. ADA spokesman Don Kusler says that score puts Kerry just outside the liberal top 10 for current senators.
Kerry's high rankings on the left are matched by low rankings from the right. The American Conservative Union gave Kerry a 13/100 for 2003 but only a 5/100 overall. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which tracks business-friendly votes, gave Kerry a zero ranking in 2003. But as with the National Journal, the chamber relied on a small data set for 2003. "Kerry missed 14 of the 23 votes we scored, and he was against us on all of the other votes, and that's why he got a zero," explains Ron Eidshaug, a lobbyist for the chamber. For his Senate career, the chamber gives Kerry a 37/100, a ranking that puts him to the to the right of liberals like Kennedy, Paul Sarbanes and Russ Feingold.
Stanford professor David Brady says Kerry's Senate track record is exactly the right one for a Democratic senator who wants to be president. A Democrat who works more to the middle in order to "get stuff done" risks coming off as too conservative to get through the Democratic primaries, Brady says. A Democrat who clings too hard to the left -- a Barbara Boxer or a Ted Kennedy -- won't survive the general election.
"Kerry is sort of in between the can-do guys and the ideologues," says Brady, an expert on Congress at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "If you want to be president, you don't want to be Bob Dole and you don't want to be Tom Daschle because, over the years, the success of getting stuff done makes you a moderate in your party. But if you're too far left, they're going to beat the s--- out of you [in the general election] for being a lefty."
That's happening to Kerry anyway, of course. And -- not surprisingly, given all the terror alerts and the war in Iraq -- it's happening most often on the subject of defense. Both Bush and Cheney have taken to suggesting that Kerry seeks to "negotiate" with or "appease" terrorists. The Republicans underscore that line of attack by claiming that, as a senator, Kerry once sought to cut the nation's intelligence budget and cancel some of its most critical weapons systems.
