Nate Silver (NYT): Earlier this week, Ezra Klein of The Washington Post published a column titled “Obama Revealed: A Moderate Republican”….he argued that the president’s policy preferences in some key areas, including health care, resemble those of a Republican from the early 1990s….
….I’m a big fan of Mr. Klein’s work, but I don’t find his thesis persuasive in this case … It’s fairly easy to demonstrate that Mr. Obama’s policy preferences resemble those of a typical Democrat in today’s Congress … A system called DW-Nominate rates each member of Congress on a scale from negative 1 (very liberal on economic issues) to positive 1 (very conservative) based on their roll-call votes. The system also creates a score for each president based on cases in which the outcome he desired from a vote in Congress was clearly articulated.
According to the system, the score for the average Democrat in the 111th Congress was -0.382, although there was a fairly significant range, from very liberal Democrats like Dennis J. Kucinich (-0.612) and Barbara Lee (-0.743) to moderates like Heath Shuler (-0.100) and Ben Nelson (-0.030).
Mr. Obama’s score of -0.399 was very close to the average, splitting the difference between his party’s liberal and moderate wings….
Mr. Obama’s positions are also broadly in line with the median Democratic voter. According to polling conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, 70 percent of Democrats think Mr. Obama’s positions are “about right”, and those who disagreed were about as likely to say he was too conservative (12 percent) as too liberal (14 percent).
Read full article here – and more here at The People’s View
Thank you Dorothy 
What the hell is going on at WaPo? That place must be losing money. They seem to be getting more and more desperate to get attention. Never read that whole article but when I heard about the premise I just laughed!
Now with Trump sitting at their table they have gone too far.
I HAVE TO SAY…THE PRESIDENT IS LOOKIN’ MIGHTY FINE IN THAT COWBOY HAT. THEN AGAIN…WHAT DOESN’T HE LOOK FINE IN!!!! THE SAME GOES FOR THE FIRST LADY…BEAUTIFUL COUPLE THEY ARE!
I remember that shot. He can be my cowboy any time. lol.
Michelle!!!! Watch out for Dorothy! Lol!
The man is hot. We all know that. lol!
Giddyup! With all due respect, I’ld like a cowboy like that!
Ride um cowgirl Sue. Hee Haw. Gosh, I am sitting here laughing out loud. It is nice to be able to laugh on occasion.
Ah, Sue…….there are no words.
Ezra Klein is such a snake.
he’s been spending too much time with Rachel Madcow. They are both insane.
Lisa, we should find a way to make sure that the Rachel is aware of Nate’s article. I am sick of her, Obama is not a “real” democrats.
I figure we should all swamp her e-mail with links to this article. She is too much. I realized that people like her are never happy unless they are truly miserable i.e: if a Koch brother became president. Then she could sigh and lament and scream as much as she wanted for as long as she wanted. For her it’s all or nothing. Complete pinko-commie propoganda or absolute dictatorship. It must be nice for her too live in a world of absolutes, with no grey areas or need for compromise. I have this recurring fantasy that the Koch brothers take over MSNBC for the sole purpose of tormenting and firing her dumb ass. Is that too spiteful? I’d laugh my ass off if they did though. They would have security grab her and follow her to her office, where she would be given one small cardboard box and five minutes to take only what could fit into the box. Then the brothers would come into her office, ask for her pass key or identification card and use a blow torch to destroy it right infornt of her face, and tell her to get the hell out of the office before they set two huge Doberman dogs on her, then their parting shot to her would be: “we’ll make sure you never work in this town again.” Ahhhhhhhh
Gosh I remember when Ezra Klein used to be a champion of facts and reporting real events without putting a negative/untrue connotation on the events. What in the world is happening at Washington Post?
UT Austin Liberal, are you the Austin Liberal that comments on The People’s View?
Oh no.. I’m not..lol
Ezra’s just angling for Cenk’s spot once MSNBC kicks that even bigger jerk off the program … or maybe Ezra would like to be FoxNoise’s ‘balance jock’
OMG! Are they getting rid of that cretin? YOu know Ezra would become a different person if he had a show. He would become, everyone scream now, ONE OF THEM!
That line between left leaning journalists and their right leaning counterparts is getting mighty blurry. Shame, shame!
The problem is that they go so far left, they end up on the right. Idiots. I’m so disgusted with them.
Sometimes the protestations of those we associate with progressive and liberal casues have a way of swaying independent voters….so it’s not always bad. The reality is todays Republicans are far more right than is generally assumed. In a tug of war that via compromise produces legislation, it lacks perspective to consider any singular person or action without supporting context. I like Ezra’s work, goes without saying, I am not always going to agree with him. Seems like this is an off handed way of saying how extreme the Republicans are.
I get so easily frustrated by political theater….I prefer to be persuaded by facts and realities.
The President looks good in that cowboy hat. Now all he needs is to put on a pair of shades.