Obama: National Journal Rating Of Me As "Number One Liberal" Is Bogus
In the meeting with the Indy Star edit board that's going on right now, Obama pushed back against the National Journal's recent rating of him as the number one liberal in the Senate, a ranking that will no doubt be one of the GOP's chief attacks against him this fall.
The push-back is worth a quick look, since he'll have to come up with a strong way of countering this in the general election, presuming he's the nominee.
Obama questioned NJ's methodology, arguing that "they selected 10 votes out of the many hundreds that I've cast" which the mag thought were indicators of his liberalism. One of those votes, he said, was a bill that he'd sponsored calling for a new "office of public integrity."
Obama then questioned "the notion that the National Journal scored that as a quote-unquote liberal vote," adding: "I don't think there's anything liberal about wanting to reduce the appearance of questionable ethics in the Senate."
Now, that's a good line. And Obama is obviously talking to a wonkish group here, so getting down into the policy weeds to refute the "most liberal" claim is an understandable approach.
But during the general we'll be hearing this claim at the soundbite level ad infinitum. So Obama will need to come up with a sharp and pithy way of knocking this one down without getting into a debate about the study's flawed methodology.
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