plotting your position

There are a number of sites on the world wide web that are designed to help you dear reader/voter decide whom to vote for come election day. It could be reasonably argued that this site is not one of them. One site we recently discovered plots candidate positions on a graph which is purportedly designed to help you determine the liberal, conservative, or populist tendency of the candidate. No mention of being progressive, guess that's just not an option in today's politcal climate. It's hard for these sites to hide their biases. For instance in the above graphic, the summary points describe both John McCain and Mitt Romney as conservatives with populist leanings while Clinton, Obama, and Kucinich are referred to as hard-core liberals. Ron Paul would be the most moderate of the candidates. We've included the Socialist Party candidate McKinley just to let you know how they really think about the Dems. Such an approach is really designed to polarize opinions about the candidates.

There's another popular site that allows you to answer a bunch of push-poll type questions and then it tells you the candidate you should vote for. Kucinich was no longer an option by the time I got a chance to cast a vote.

We raise these points because last evening we found ourselves having dinner with Congressman Dennis Moore (D, KS). Lest you belief this to be an intimate affair, we were joined by 60 or so of his supporters, and we were not seated at the head table. No questions from the floor were taken.

Congressman Moore describes himself as a conservative Democrat. Which for him primarily means being fiscally conservative and working across the aisle, two things that everyone seems to agree upon but almost no one does. President Bush was his favorite punching bag. Bush is an easy target and since he's almost separate from the party-at-large anyone, one can pick on him without having to pick on other Republicans or describe why your own party, now in the majority, can't seem to get bills passed on the Hill.

We note that the fiscally conservative Democrat Moore was addressing this group because it is one that has received large earmarks from Congress, in part due to Moore's support. One district's pork is another district's jobs but when was the last time you were able to get an elected member of Congress come and talk to your civic group about issues that you felt were important? Probably never unless your group happens to contain large numbers of folks who can contribute mightily to re-election campaigns.