Who Crossed the Line?

When I do a post on a campaign ad, I prefer to do them from first impression. Most ads are designed to impact that way, and us wonks will have plenty of opportunity to dissect the ads later, but the average Joe will not.

I stand behind my impression of the 2nd ad's effectiveness and sincerity. Kennedy does not do a run and hide/duck and cover, but he did play a little loose with the facts.

MINvolved points out the key one:

Kennedy did not “cross party lines” on HR2380, the pension bill he cites in his commercial. The vote for this piece of legislation featured a large majority of Democrats voting against the proposal, which also contained very Republican tax cuts and extensions for the super wealthy…which makes so much sense in a bill that proposes to address a $400+ billion pension deficit.

So really, most people would count this vote as another vote with the President and the Party, here was the tally from the link above.

AYES -- 224 GOP, 70 DEM - 294 Total
NOES -- 1 GOP 30 DEM 1 IND - 132 TOTAL

So it looks to me like it was the 70 Democrats that crossed Party Lines, including Minnesota Democrats Peterson and Oberstar, (and ONE GOPer which generally is a procedural thing), not the 224 GOPers.

Y - Gutknecht (R)
Y - Kline (R)
N - Sabo (D)
N - McCollum (D)
Y - Ramstad (R)
Y - Kennedy (R)
Y - Peterson (D)
Y - Oberstar (D)

If this is the best Kennedy can do to show he is reaching across the great divide created by the current Administration, he's in worse shape then I thought.

But I still think it was a good ad!

Flash

(I know he used the Roll call vote 22 which was a procedural motion to appoint conferees following Senate approval. This bill had already passed the House in December and that is the number used above. Kennedy is being pretty disingenuous since that is NOT what he is saying in the ad. If that is where he wants to set the bar for cherry picking votes, Amy will have a free for all with his record)