WHY THE NATIONAL JOURNAL IS WRONG ABOUT OBAMA

The National Journal claimed that Obama was "the most liberal" Senator based on his 2007 voting record and the wingnuts have been repeating this result for some time. MediaMatters shows that the study was conceptually flawed:

As Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented (here, here, here, here, here, and here), among the votes Obama cast that contributed to National Journal's "most liberal senator" label were those to implement the 9-11 Commission's homeland security recommendations, provide more children with health insurance, expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and maintain a federal minimum wage. Obama himself, when asked by Politico editor-in-chief John F. Harris about the National Journal's 2007 vote ratings during a February 11 Politico/WJLA-TV interview, criticized the National Journal's methodology by noting that it considered "liberal" his vote for "an office of public integrity that stood outside of the Senate, and outside of Congress, to make sure that you've got an impartial eye on ethics problems inside of Congress."

MediaMatters also found another, more objective study:

Raasch also asserted: "Obama's federal legislative record is too sparse for a long-term ideological stamp although the National Journal labeled him the Senate's most liberal member." Raasch did not note however that, in contrast with a study by political science professors Keith Poole and Jeff Lewis that considered all Senate votes, National Journal uses a more subjective methodology, basing its ranking on "99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale." In contrast with the National Journal results for 2007, Poole and Lewis' study placed Obama in a tie for 10th most liberal senator in 2007.