Attacking Kerry's Liberal Credentials? Shame, Shame, Shame.

[WiseMen]

Unless I have missed something over the last 20 years that I have been watching, John Kerry has maintained the best record on environmental votes and for issues affecting the working poor of any major candidate for the Presidency in modern history.

Any progressive on this board who attacks Kerry’s progressive credentials should be ashamed. .

For thirty five years Kerry has fought for labor rights, women’s rights and campaign finance reform. Kerry’s record is solid on education and social security. Despite significant political cost, Kerry has opposed capital punishment, the NRA and all the fat-cat special interest lobby groups camped out in Washington.

Few senators have maintained a record so widely regarded as above reproach. John Kerry’s legendary indifference to special interest initiatives has been widely slammed as arrogance, aloofness and neglect of his “constituents.”

Kerry is notorious for votes which are against the views of this own constituents:

Only a fourteen Democratic senators voted against Bill Clintons Defense of Marriage Act, John Kerry was one.

Only sixteen Democratic senators voted against Bush’s bankruptcy bill, John Kerry was one.

Perhaps the two most important political action groups on the progressive ranks are Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the League of Conservation Voters. This is how these groups score Kerry’s 20 years in the Senate:


http://www.adaction.org/presvr990219.html


ADA is America's oldest independent liberal lobbying organization, founders including Eleanor Roosevelt, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

Here are the ADA LifetTime Scores of Some Past & Present Presidential Candidates

John Kerry 92%

As compared with

Al Gore 66%
Richard Gephard 74%
John Edwards 85%
Ted Kennedy 88%


http://www.lcv.org/

League of Conservation Voters, the political voice of the national environmental movement, endorsed John Kerry, who received a 96% lifetime score from the LVC, the highest of all the candidates:
“John Kerry is a man whose unparalleled record on environmental issues has earned him an extraordinary lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters, and he is clearly the strongest environmentalist in the field,” said Deb Callahan, president of League of Conservation Voters. “John Kerry understands that the American people need a president who will never roll over to corporate contributors at the expense of the health and safety of the public. I urge citizens and environmentalists in New Hampshire to cast their vote for John Kerry on Tuesday.”
John Kerry spoke at first Earth Day in Massachusetts 33 years ago.
John Kerry’s Life time LVC score: 96%

As compared to :

Dennis Kucinich 90%
John Edwards 76%

Let’s leave the deceitful and anecdotal attacks on Kerry’s liberal record to Rove and DLC-type folks. That will be bad enough.

[Raya]

1. Don't expect rationality here. Wierd attacks are the rule . Have fun

[mopinko]

2. Any progressive on this board

who attacks Kerry’s progressive credentials


zeig heil

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Thanks for the information!

I'm a Dean supporter, but I don't diss other candidates. When it comes down to it, I'm ABB. So I'm glad when I see someone bring out some FACTS about Kerry. The spin I'm getting on other boards (where freepers are allowed) is that Kerry hasn't sponsored any major piece of legislation, and when he votes, it's way far-left liberal (which would be fine with me!)

Can you name some pieces of legislation Kerry has sponsored? I'd like to have the information to use against the freepers.

[goobergunch]

8. You can look up bills that Kerry has sponsored here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d108query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d107query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d106query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d105query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d104query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d103query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d102query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d101query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d100query.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d099query.html

[goobergunch]

4. I agreed with Kerry's principled stance on capital punishment

Then he said that he supported capital punishment against terrorists - who the death penalty is IMHO ineffective against anyway (as many engage in suicide tactics).

[WiseMen]

19. Link please. I would like to see this horrible change of position

[goobergunch]

23. MTP, 1 December 2002

Looking for a link.

EDIT: Can't find a transcript link, but note this post from DU at the time:

Snellius (3133 posts) Dec-01-02, 01:24 PM (ET)
Reply to post #54
55. Kerry was very clear that his oppostion was not for moral reasons

He was against it because it was unfairly applied. He did say he supported it for terrorists.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=20321&forum=DCForumID60&archive=yes#55

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

5. I will never attack Kerry's Neo-Liberal credentials

NAFTA, GATT, IWR, Patriot Act - Kerry is 100% Neo-Liberal all the way!

[Raya]

7. I think Wellstone got 99% ADA score. Guess Kerry is not Wellstone.

[retread]

34. Agree. Name a senator in the last 10 years who is!!

*

[IndianaGreen]

6. Anyone that voted for PATRIOT and wants to keep it is not a progressive

Therefore, Kerry is an enemy of our civil liberties and cannot be trusted with the Presidency.

[jpgray]

10. So Dean is as well? (nt)

[IndianaGreen]

14. Dean didn't vote for PATRIOT

Kerry did, and Kerry loves the power that PATRIOT has given the Executive Branch and he wants that power for himself.

[jpgray]

16. Dean won't repeal it! Like Kerry he wants to "change" it

You keep holding Kerry to a standard you don't hold Dean to.

[George_Bonanza]

20. More like Dean wasn't able to vote for the Patriot Act

[Nazgul35]

36. and when Kerry has the chance to do something...

like vote, look what he does with it!

Like the recent omnibus bill with the two riders (that we know of) that:

1) Had the over time rule changes that were beaten back twice...
2) Allows for the destruction of FBI gun checks after 24 hours...

No leadership from Kerry to get the senate Dems to hold a filibuster...

So if you are going to make the distinction about others not having to worry about voting, than you have to conceed those times when Kerry could have acted, but didn't....

And I'd have to say, there are far too many instances of his not acting than there are of him acting....

Not a good sign for the fighter we will need in the Fall!

[retread]

35. "Kerry loves the power that PATRIOT has ....". Ahhh a mind-reader,

tell me what I am thinking about your inane post.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. Again, Patriot Act is a huge piece of legislation...

To the best of my knowledge Kerry wants to get rid of the parts that allow the government to spy on suspected terrorists.

[WiseMen]

21. Guess you will support a Candidate who did not have to vote. Smart.

[IndianaGreen]

25. The antiwar voters will not vote for Kerry in the Fall

just as surely as the gun rights voters will not vote for Kerry because of his 100% gun grabbing voting record.

Kerry is unelectable!

[seventhson]

9. I think it would be better to take a closer look

Kerry is bested by Edwards and Kucinich in several categories.

Take a look at the breakdown of issues here:


http://www.adaction.org/Campaign2004/2004PR_1/2004pr_1.HTM

They are competitive with him in the overall newest numbers.

My criticisms of him are because I believe he is not trustworthy due to his longstanding sociopolitical connections to the Bushes. I simply don't trust his rhetoric or his record to ultimately protect me and my family from the Bushes if he is elected. I hope I am wrong if he does win, but in the meantime I do NOT want him to win these primaries.

His Massachusetts constituency is mostly extremely liberal/progressive and this also explains why Edwards and even Kucinich (from more conservative states) do not score as high as he does in his votes which represent his constituency (not risky votes in other words).

Edwards looks damn good and even Lieberman scores quite high in many categories.

For example (from the link above):

How They’ve Voted on Issues Through the Years


Note: Compiled from Votes selected for the annual ADA Voting Records



Campaign Finance and Lobbying
Voted Yes in the ADA Position


Lieberman
100%


13 out of 13 Votes





Gephardt
100%


9 out of 9 Votes






Edwards

100%


4 out of 4 Votes



Kucinich

100%


4 out of 4 Votes



Moseley Braun
100%


2 out of 2 Votes





Kerry

93%


13 out of 14 Votes

[waldenx]

11. it is easy to keep a high score

when you never show up to vote on the important things.

[Raya]

12. A 20 year record on not showing up. Very Funny.

[KittyWampus]

13. Missed 60% of His Votes

Including Medicare back in November.

[Raya]

17. Compared with who. Link Please. Why Didn't he miss DOMA? ANWR?

Wonder why I hear republicans saying he is the most liberal of
the candidates?

[WiseMen]

18. Could you provide a link or evidence to this unless it is just trash

[goobergunch]

22. I can't speak to the 60%

However, I can speak to the vote on the Medicare bill:

On the Conference Report (H.R. 1 Conference Report)
Not Voting - 2
Kerry (D-MA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00459

[bigtree]

30. He was there for the medicare bill and voted against cloture.

When the cloture vote passed even I walked away. I watched the whole debete. To pretend that a vote by Sen. Kerry would have defeated that bill is smoke. He was there for the cloture vote. That was the vote that sealed the fate of those opposed to the legislation. John Kerry fought that bill tooth and nail all the way through. Your tactic in suggesting that he didn't show up that day to defeat that bill is fantasy at best and subversive politics at the worst.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. "Liberals" vote for war?

Oh, that's right, the senator with all of that much acclaimed "foreign policy experience" was "fooled" by bush. Or, is the "The war is necessary", rationalization? Or, "The Patriot Act has good points", excuse? Or, the "Bush isn't deserter", acclamation?

23 other senators voted against the war. How did "liberal" Kerry vote?

Shame? The junior senator from MA should be ashamed of voting to have people killed so he could appear "patriotic".

[IndianaGreen]

28. Excellent point, bandera

Kerry is no liberal, he is an opportunist who will tailor his message according to the audience. In the North, Kerry is antiwar. In the South, Kerry is prowar.

I would rather vote for a Lieberman, at least with Joe I know what I am getting. Skull & Bones doesn't take Jews, and that makes Joe even more acceptable than Kerry.

[bigtree]

32. How would a 'no' vote restrain the president

when he was crowing that he already had the authority to invade under 1441. He didn't go around the country waving the IWR as his justification. He doesn't even mention it in his boasting. What purpose does it serve to claim that Congress authorized him to unilateraly and preemtively invade and occupy.

How you define the pro-IWR vote as political expediency while at the same time advocating that a 'no' vote was superior.

What are you really arguing here? That more Americans were likely to agree with Sen. Kerry's vote, therefore he would get the political benefit of that? Was it clear at the time of the vote that Americans supported the IWR? If not, then where is the political benefit? How could anyone know what the politics would be a year from the vote?

If most Americans do indeed believe that his vote was correct then they will be more aligned with the argument of the senator and others that Bush pushed past the clear mandate of Congress which advocated in its resolution that the threat be imminent, and that Bush go back to the U.N. and exhaust the potential for international support. None of which the president did. He pushed past Congress, the American people, and the international community in his reckless, predisposed agenda to invade and occupy Iraq.


The power to commit forces was invested in loopholes in the WPA. The War Powers Act. The same authority that presidents have used for decades to commit forces for 60 days without congressional approval. In the unlikely event that the resolution would have failed, the president would have almost certainly moved foward with his pre-disposed agenda to invade and occupy. Congress would then be loath to remove those forces and retreat.

Bush wanted the cover of Congress. Save the provisions that Sen. Kerry and others had included in the resolution about proceeding to war only as a last resort, Democrat's imput on that bill - which sought to restrain Bush and send him back to the U.N. - was reduced to a no vote. The bill doesn't mandate an immediate rush to invade Iraq. It actually mandates against that. Bush disregarded the intent of Congress, the American people, and the international community in his reckless rush to invasion and occupation.

The resolution was seen by some Democrats, like John Kerry, as a vehicle to steer Bush back to the U.N. and hopefully forestall war. Indeed Sen. Kerry and others were able to get language to that effect inserted into the bill. That's where, in the public debate we effectively get to 'Bush lied'. Bush lied to Congress, the American people, and the international community in his reckless rush to war.

Foisting the blame on a congressional resolution, which in part, sought to reign Bush in, takes the heat off of Bush. Bush pushed ahead. He had planned to all along. He had the power. The resolution was a minor detour.


Nowhere in the resolution does it give him authority to do what he did. Nowhere in the speeches or rhetoric of any Democrat in the Senate, save Leiberman and Zell Miller, is support given for his reckless invasion. Nowhere.

But some, in the pursuit of political expediency will attempt to hold Democrats who voted for the IWR as responsible for his arbitrary invasion. Bush would love to hide behind the vote, but he knows the IWR didn't give him the authority so he doesn't mention it at all in his justification. Only in the Democratic campaign do we foist the blame on Democrats for the sins of Bush.

[IndianaGreen]

33. Did you see Kerry calling for Bush's impeachment when the war started?

Of course not! Kerry was there cheering the war right alongside Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Kerry's membership in Skull & Bones is a legitimate issue because this secret Order has been involved in every imperialist expansion the US has been involved.

George Bush, Skull & Bones
and the New World Order
A New American View
International Edition White Paper
Paul Goldstein and Jeffrey Steinberg
April 1991

This secret fraternity is based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where many of the leading members of the U.S. government and the American intelligence community received their formal education. The Order, as it is referred to by its members, is a bastion of White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, which is at the core of the American 20th century outlook. The reader will learn that President George Herbert Walker Bush's concept of the New World Order is an old idea, one which has its origins in the philosophy and beliefs of the secret Skull & Bones fraternity. Today in particular, this is the prevailing outlook of the U.S. government, many of whose most influential members, like the president himself, are part of the Skull & Bones network. These men seek to recreate the American imperium of the immediate post-World War II period, an era which President Bush frequently refers to as "the American Century."

The powerful men of Skull & Bones genuinely believe that they have a strategic and moral "right" to control world affairs. Consequently, they take upon themselves the authority to crush any rivalrous threat to U.S. imperial leadership, whether by current allies, such as Japan, Germany or Great Britain, or by Cold War adversaries, like the Soviet Union. The members of the Order, due to their narrow WASP upbringing, view with particular suspicion the maneuverings of Zionist Israel and its affluent, influential lobby in the United States.

Bush, his fellow Bonesmen and their like-thinking elitist allies in the American Establishment see themselves as New World Order warriors, an American samurai caste of sorts, whose mission is restoring American greatness. They intend to utilize the institutional networks of the U.S. government and key private agencies, such as the New York Council on Foreign Relations to advance their purpose. The Skull & Bones members believe in the idea of "constructive chaos". By keeping their true policy intentions secret, by constantly sending out mixed signals on all critical policy issues, they consciously seek to sow confusion among both their nominal "friends" and "enemies" alike.

http://www.alpheus.org/html/source_materials/parapolitics/sandb.html

[bigtree]

38. The snarky smears and the shameless innuendo

only serve to define the posters.

Skull&Bones:
:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

[WiseMen]

41. What about the powerfull men of FOOT IN MOUTH? Thought they ruled?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. Everyone KNEW that bush was going to go to war no matter what.

Kerry's lame excuses for voting for the IWR, that it was to "steer the president" are facile at best. The even more lame excuse that "the president lied" and he was bamboozled are merely pathetic.

To vote against the resolution was an act of courage in the face of the public mood of the time, yet 23 senators did vote against it.

I'm not "foisting the blame on Democrats for the sins of Bush". I'm blaming them for the gutless stance they took in not openly opposing the needless bloodshed that has occurred and continues to occur.

His vote for the IWR was an act of conscienceless political expediency. He and Edwards made their votes in order to appear "patriotic", "strong on defense", and the usual tripe that justifies war.

Saying that it was merely political maneuvering to forestall war is disingenuous at best.

Kerry and Edwards caved. Would the war have been prevented if they had stood firm against it and voted against the IWR? No. Bush was going to have his war no matter what.

It came down to doing what is right. Thousands of people are dead. The votes wouldn't have prevented it. But, their votes condoned it.

They will never get my vote.

[bigtree]

40. Here's one who voted the same as Sen. Kerry

Sen. Fritz Hollings (SC):

"I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad....To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero...assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war."

That is what President George Herbert Walker Bush, the President's daddy, said.

We all knew that about Iraq. But why did we go in and why did the Senator from South Carolina vote for the resolution last October? Why? I can tell my colleagues why. On August 7, Vice President Cheney, speaking in California, said of Saddam Hussein: What we know now from various sources is that he continues to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then on September 8: We do know with absolute certainty that he is attempting to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

Then the President of the United States himself said, in his weekly address on September 14, before we voted in October: Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Then on September 24, Prime Minister Blair said that the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

On September 8 of last year, Condoleezza Rice said that we do not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

On October 7, President Bush said: Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Now, any reasonable, sober, mature, experienced individual listening to that litany knows to vote against that resolution would have been pure folly. One has to back the President.

I am not on the Intelligence Committee. I was not privy to any kind of intelligence but I knew we had a lot of intelligence. The truth is, I thought the Israeli intelligence was really furnishing all of this information and that we were going in this time for our little friend Israel. Instead of them being blamed, we could finish up what Desert Storm had left undone; namely, getting rid of Saddam and getting rid of nuclear at the same time.

I voted for the resolution. I was misled.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

42. Birds of a feather..

So, Fritz says Bush, Rice, Cheney, and the Israelis are all trustworthy in providing evidence. Yeah, right. They're all such notorious truthtellers. He goes on to say, "One has to back the president." Why?

I can't believe that you're using Fritz Hollings as a backup to Kerry's vote.

[drfemoe]

26. Somehow "shaming" individuals

does not fit in with my working definition of "progressive". I'll continue to allow the natural consequences of my actions to inform me of their appropriateness, not someone else's judgment.

btw -- Kerry IS a "DLC-type" folk
AND, fyi, the President of ADA, Jim McDermott (Congressman/Doctor), has endorsed Howard Dean.
http://www.politics1.com/dean.htm

[WiseMen]

27. ADA's McDermott Endorses Dean. Guess Kerry's Top ADA Score is Valid

[drfemoe]

31. Due to long shelf life, not recent activity .

I really don't care to verify Kerry's "lifetime" accumulated score. I'm more familiar with the past three years. Plus, there are so many things you cannot know from statistics. I'll take your word for it.

[creativelcro]

29. I doubt his progressive credentials and I'm not ashamed

How about that?

>>
Any progressive on this board who attacks Kerry’s progressive credentials should be ashamed. .

[Killarney]

37. Great post. It's the truth.