Are you to the left or to the right of...? Today, Hillary Clinton.

Maybe you stand exactly were she stands. Let us know.

I stand to the left of her.

She's too much of a corporatist, of course. :shrug:

The irony is how much the RW pillories her for being too 'liberal.' :shrug:

Why mess with a winning slogan?

Where is she on the spectrum and how do you make that determination? And where are the other candidates using the same criteria?

Then again, when polls continually show that most Americans support decriminalized marijuana, universal health care, and end to the war in Iraq and protected Social Security money, I'm convinced that on the issues, most Americans are liberals as well, and therefore to the left of "progressive" Hillary Clinton.

Its SINGLE PAYER health care that most Americans want. The corporate Democrats have co-opted the term "universal health care" to mean an employer based private insurance system.

Only one Democratic candidate offers a single payer plan - Dennis Kucinich.

Not even remotely close.

...and that is why she is not my candiate of choice.

This might help:



http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2007

It is important to recognise that The Political Compass™ is a continuum rather than consisting of hard and fast quadrants. For example, Ron Paul on the social scale is actually closer to Dennis Kucinich than to many figures within his own party. But on the economic scale, they are, of course, far apart.

When examining the chart it is important to note that although most of the candidates seem quite different, in substance they occupy a relatively restricted area within the universal political spectrum. Democracies with a system of proportional representation give expression to a wider range of political views. While Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Hillary Clinton is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while in any other western democracy her record is that of a moderate conservative.

Gravel should be closer to the purple box. He's more libertarian than Kucinich.

Flat tax is flatly right-wing. I think I only realized from something I read today that this was Gravel's proposal. What utter nonsense.

I didn't copy the first paragraph of the PoliticalCompass text, but this may have to do with his ranking:

They have been evaluated through scrutiny of public statements,
manifestos, interviews and, crucially, voting records.

I suspect that flat tax has never been put to a vote. ;) If voting record was weighted more heavily than other elements, that might explain the result.

(When you say Gravel is more "libertarian" than Kucinich, I assume you meant in the right-wing economics sense rather than the sense in which it is used by PoliticalCompass.)

And while we're here ... I was just reading your comments regarding Kucinich's views on reproductive rights being suspect. As a flaming free abortion on demand & without apology long-timer, I don't have the same feeling. I read his initial statement on his reversal, which I can't find anywhere now, and I think it showed that he -- possibly after a few bats were applied to his head -- got it. He didn't mumble about safe, legal and rare. He talked about how reproductive freedom is crucial to women's autonomy as agents in their own lives, and you can't say things like that (or even understand the script) if you don't get it.

The sudden change of heart occurred just before his first run for the presidency back in 2002/2003.

That being said, I'd definitely trust Kucinich choosing Supreme Court justices way more than any Republican, including Giuliani and Ron Paul.

I've suspected that a lot of other people, and perhaps a few women in particular, decided the timing was right to sit him in a dark room with a bright light shining in his face and smack him repeatedly -- with the bat of reason and human empathy and rights, of course -- until he really did get it.

A decent, rational person can't take any position other than that any restrictions on access to abortion are violations of fundamental human rights -- and without the ability to exercise fundamental human rights, no one can be an agent in his/her own life, and will forever be nothing but a means to someone else's end. And that isn't consistent with liberal, let alone libertarian-left, thinking.

So yeah: I think Biden's personal views on the issue are ... well, I can't really characterize them as anything, because for the most part they are simply personal views, and I don't really care what people's personal views on much of anything are, as long as they have the decency to shut up about them if they're not relevant.

The point is that he gets it right almost all the time when it comes to actions. His vote on the deceitfully named "partial-birth abortion ban" bill is extremely disappointing. I would have expected him, big head and nobody's dummy that he is, to have caught on to the shell game being played (the bill banned a procedure, not a procedure at a particular stage of pregnancy as its proponents wanted everyone to believe, and most did), at the very least. I would also have expected him simply to reject the premise, that women are in need of moral guardianship and oversight. He also voted against federal funding, and while this is a classical "liberal" position, it is not consistent with advocacy for women's rights. I wouldn't expect him to do any damage in this regard as president, obviously. But maybe it's time someone sat him down and took a bat to his head too.

but here's Kucinich from ontheissues.org


Dennis Kucinich is a Populist-Leaning Liberal




Hillary Clinton is a Hard-Core Liberal.




Barack Obama is a Hard-Core Liberal

That site is badly in need of some upgrading ... I kept ending up back in 2004, where I was matched with John Kerry ...

It's very interesting how the candidates are all clustered much as they are in the PoliticalCompass graph ... and what a very different quadrant they're clustered in. ;)

wow, I wouldn't have thought Gravel would end up there.

But that's no surprise.

Best reply in the thread.

Every analysis I've seen, including the observation of the president of the latest Union to endorse Clinton, says their positions are practically indistinguishable.

Very far to the left.

I guess I would be considered to the left of her on immigration, death penalty and gay marriage...

I'm right with her on foreign policy, health care, education, environment...

but it's too simplistic to just say you're "left" or "right" of a candidate.

Way, way, way to the left of her on social issues...

Left of her on economic issues

A bit left of her on defense/foreign policy issues...

The '07 primary candidates:



Some other public figures, for comparison:





Where I stand:

Economic Left/Right: -8.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.67

http://www.politicalcompass.org/facebook/pcgraphpng.php?ec=-8.25&soc=-6.67