NYTimes notices Hillary's natural affinity toward the neocons.

[bigtree]

9. this is a contrived article designed to inflame

. . .with little actual fact to go with all of their broad assumptions and claims. In the olden days, we regarded this as flamebait. Those with dim memories of past political skirmishes latch onto opposition-generated bait like this and appropriate it into their own campaigns.

It's an easy hook which has very little resemblance, to folks who know the score, to Hillary's actual strategy or record. Clinton has one of the most liberal records among her Democratic peers; has an overall record that is mostly in line with the most progressive of her legislative colleagues. This article is only believable if you buy into the memes around here that have her voting and acting like an Eisenhower republican.

consider her voting record provided by the Left Coaster:

1.1 Consistent with observations (and caveats) in Part 1 of this series, outside of national security and war, Sen. Clinton gets high-to-very-high progressive scores almost across the board. In short, her voting history reflects a very high consistency of voting with a majority of the most progressive Senators in Congress across a multitude of issues - especially those concerning corporate interests. This does not, in any way, mean that she never voted badly - of course she has done so, but on the whole she voted far more in sync with the most progressive members of Congress than otherwise . . .

1.2 When we look at the overall Progressive Punch score for Sen. Clinton, it is apparent that on the whole, she voted more progressively and more in sync with the most progressive Democrats in the Senate (92%) than did Sen. Obama (90%). Now, granted there is likely to be some noise in the data - so, let's be somewhat conservative in our assessment and say that she was at least as progressive overall in her voting pattern as Sen. Obama.

1.3 Although the Far Right would love to try and make Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Clinton seem like twins separated at birth, Sen. Lieberman's voting record is nothing like Sen. Clinton's in the majority of categories. Sen. Lieberman broke with the most progressive Senators far more frequently than Sen. Clinton did and voted with the GOP far more frequently than Sen. Clinton did. Clearly, we can't look at his voting record and conclude that he has a "solid" progressive record overall. For example, on labor rights he is at 58% to Sen. Clinton's 91% progressive score according to Progressive Punch.

On corporate subsidies he is at 67% to Sen. Clinton's 100% progressive score. On war and peace his progressive score is at an abysmal 48% (more than 1 in 2 votes with the GOP and against the most progressive Democrats!) compared to Sen. Clinton's 80% - which in turn is just slightly lower than Sen. Obama's (86%) scores on war and peace. Indeed, on human rights and civil liberties, Sen. Clinton has the highest score at 82%, slightly ahead of Sen. Obama (77%).


view the tables here: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011142.php

(comparison to Lieberman was just the politics at the time of the survey.)