Friday, July 26, 2024

GovTrack retracts its rating that had Harris as most liberal senator in 2019 after Biden dropped out

GovTrack, an organization that tracks voting records in Congress, yanked its 2019 rating that pegged then-Sen. Kamala Harris as the most liberal member of the upper chamber - after several media outlets including The Post cited the statistic in stories on the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.

Kamala Harris 3 Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

"We subsequently took down the previously published single-calendar-year statistics for the same reason." Tauberer previously warned in 2020 that GovTrack's 2019 ranking of Harris was not reliable, telling the Washington Post at the time that it was at "Odds with what other serious analysis of Harris's career has found." "I think the short answer is that both things can be true: She can both be sponsoring/co-sponsoring left-leaning legislation, something with typically little risk, while also being pragmatic when push comes to shove on risky and impactful decisions," he added at the time.

Elizabeth Warren 3 Kamala Harris was even deemed more liberal than Elizabeth Warren on GovTrack's 2019 ranking.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have already seized on GovTrack's old rating, with the Republican nominee alluding to it at a recent rally in Charlotte, NC. "Kamala Harris is the most liberal elected politician in American history. Did you know that? She's an ultra-liberal politician. She's absolutely terrible. She's as you know more liberal than Bernie Sanders, can you believe it?" Trump chided.

In a recent attack ad against Sen. Bob Casey, Keystone State Republican Dave McCormick spotlighted a clip of Harris responding to a question about the ranking in which she was seen smiling.

Trump's 2020 campaign also spotlighted the ranking after Biden announced Harris as his runningmate.

An Internet Archives capture of the GovTrack rating from July 9 shows the old ranking. Now, the website simply says, “Page Not Found” when directed to the 2019 “report card.”

https://nypost.com/2024/07/25/us-news/govtrack-scrubbed-its-rating-that-had-kamala-harris-as-most-liberal-senator-in-2019-after-biden-dropped-out/

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