I have an honest question for Clinton supporters.

Recently Clinton has taken to claiming the situation with FL & MI is the moral equivalent to women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, electoral fraud in Zimbabwe, and (perhaps worst of all) FL in 2000. In other words, to hear Clinton tell it today, the DNC's decision not to recognize FL & MI's delegates is an unprecedented violation of the basic tenants of our democracy. She assures us that she is fighting on behalf of the voters of FL & MI not out of self-interest, but because she is under a moral obligation to make sure their votes are counted.

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Any doubts that Lincoln Chafee is a "real" Republican must have been laid to rest yesterday when he chose to associate his increasingly sleazy campaign with a serial abuser of women, Antonio R. Freitas. It is a measure of how desperate his campaign has become that he is willing to stake his argument for re-election on the word of a man twice convicted of battering women. It is one thing for Freitas, a man with an axe to grind against the prosecutor (Whitehouse) who twice put him behind bars, to spout such nonsense, but for Chafee to associate himself with Freitas' absurd conspiracy theories does a disservice to his office and the people of Rhode Island. But then as Lincoln Chafee so cavalierly said about Freitas yesterday, "nobody's perfect." Perhaps not, but Rhode Island can do better.

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In a previous post I asked whether Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) was a liberal, and concluded he is not. In this post I ask, "What kind of legislator is Lincoln Chafee?" Chafee is perceived by some in the pundit class (David Broder, Steve Clemons) as an independent maverick that votes his conscience even when it puts him at odds with the President and his Party. His moderate stands on abortion rights, gay rights and the environment would seem to support that contention. Chafee's supporters say he is a "thoughtful" legislator, while his detractors point out that it is a fine line between "thoughtful" and "indecisive," and an even finer one between "indecisive" and "politically calculating." I want to take a look at the kind of legislator Lincoln Chafee has been through the prism of the Social Security debate, as I believe it serves as a kind of microcosm of his legislative style in general.

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Crossposted at daily kos.

The best argument in favor of voting for Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse over incumbent Republican Lincoln Chafee in the Rhode Island Senate race has to do with control of the Senate. In order to stop the Bush agenda we need a Democratic majority in the Senate, and that majority will be impossible should Chafee's seat remain under Republican control. But for many Rhode Islanders (and to my surprise many liberal Democrats) that argument is not enough. I have heard "Lincoln Chafee is a liberal and so I am, and I vote for the man, not the party," or words to that effect more times than I care to recount. So let's examine Chafee's record to determine just how liberal he is.

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