Thread: This article is a perfect example of how to use real statistics to lie. https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-more-liberal-bernie-sanders-senate-record-analysis-shows-1524481?fbclid=IwAR0yCgBG5ZQsvYu2YJ1s_C3G3QWYsV60hKMy1GxadrKl5IKPmJA6Y73blAo

If you glance at the article itself to see what the methodology was, it's about how many bills with Republican cosponsors each cosponsored. The more "bipartisan" bills you cosponsor, the "less liberal" you are.

This means that if you're just a hack who doesn't have any particular political agenda beyond pleasing party leadership you can have mediocre centrist politics but come out as "more liberal" than an actual leftist trying to introduce new initiatives. Why?

Because if you're introducing bills to do things that aren't currently even been talked about, *of course* you'll try wherever possible to find Republican cosponsors so people will take those initiatives more seriously. So for example:

In 2014 Bernie Sanders worked with John McCain on a bill to build more public hospitals for veterans. That's a bipartisan bill he cosponsored and thus makes him "less liberal" if you use this methodology.

Of course, anyone like me who dislikes liberals and criticizes them from the left might be happy to agree that Harris is (given how *we* use the term) "more of a liberal" than the robustly social democratic Sanders, but that's not at all what this headline is meant to suggest.

The implication is that Harris is to Sanders' left, which would be a man bites dog story. What the methodology actually shows is that Harris is more of a creature of the Democratic Party machine than Sanders which....y'know....no shit.