Hillary Clinton and the Progressive Pursuit of Perfection

[Marr]

100. Those things are absurdly inaccurate.

They're built, as I understand it, from the politicians' votes and statements on various subjects. The problem is that politicians play politics. They pander with rhetoric. They vote for things their constituents want when those things have no chance of passing, and vote against things their constituents oppose, but only if they're guaranteed to pass anyway.

What's more, they're very binary; representing the politician's statement within the context of mainstream political debate at that moment. Clinton's position on Obama's health insurance reform, for instance, would add a point to her "left wing" credentials, even though that plan was not left wing.

You can't build an accurate picture of a politician's ideology that way. These charts might accurately portray the image the politician would like to project, but little else. Hillary Clinton's position on the TPP, Keystone XL, and Syria alone make that red dot's position laughable.