Rahm Emanuel's No Centrist
David Herszenhorn's Wednesday story speculating on how President-elect Barack Obama will get along with his old colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus described former Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff, as "a white, Jewish centrist."
But the "centrist" bit doesn't match Emanuel's liberal voting record, according to congressional ratings by the American Conservative Union, which awarded Emanuel, an 11-year congressman, a punylifetime rating of 13 on a scale of 100, including a flat zero out of 100 for the year 2007. That puts him well left-of-"centrist."
Herszenhorn also claimed Obama's "age and relatively moderate politics put him in the right-leaning camp of the heavily liberal group" of the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet a National Journal analysis of key votes showed that Obama was to the right of no one, at least in the Senate, finding Obama to be the most liberal senator of 2007.
