WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton may be falling behind rival Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but she has the lead in missed votes in the U.S. Senate so far this year.
After reviewing Republican presidential hopeful John McCain’s voting record on Tuesday, we examined how the Democrats were handling their day job as well.
Clinton missed 18 of 21 votes while Obama missed 10 of 21 roll calls so far this year, though they spent much of Tuesday casting votes related to a bill that ultimately passed, empowering U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct domestic surveillance on terrorism suspects without court orders.
The two skipped the final passage vote for that measure as they headed back out on the campaign trail but McCain, who has a commanding lead for his party’s nomination, stuck around for it.
McCain matched Obama’s tally for 2008, missing 10 out of 21 votes. In December, Obama and Clinton each missed 27 of 30 votes.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts (Clinton leaves the Capitol earlier this month after a vote.)
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We don’t have “Bread and Circuses”, so this will have to do. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has a consistently low average:
- Posted by KevinRepresenting: Arizona
Votes: 257 votes missed (55.3 percent of 465 total votes)
at least when she isn’t voting on anything she isnt hurting us—like being in the top ten for ear marks—you want hight taxes vote for hilary
- Posted by jimSo… why is it legal for ANY elected official to run for another office when they are IN office?
I know if my boss found out I was looking for another job I’d be on the street. At least a few of the candidates were not in office while they were running.
I think that should be the requirement - then the numbers of votes missed wouldn’t matter.
but I also think the 2 party system no longer fits this country.
- Posted by Eoghan FarquharObama ‘Yea’, Clinton ‘Not Voting’
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/ro ll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?con gress=110&session=2&vote=00015
- Posted by DanielCheck out this video on youtube about Hillary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cySK6q2P_ Nw
- Posted by terrieActually, this is innacurate. Obama showed up to vote AGAINST the bill to allow immunity and made a statement about it on the senate floor. McCain was also there, as the two met on the floor and spoke briefly. Clinton was not there at all.
- Posted by LaurenObama voted ‘Yea’ on the ammendment to not allow communications companies to have immunity. Get the record straight.
Clinton was ‘Not Voting’.
Or shall I link to the govtracker site for everyone here?
- Posted by DanielI guess the hands-on policy wonk doesn’t think voting’s important. She seems ready to discount it when voters live in caucus states as well. Huh.
- Posted by MarkClinton does NOT lead Obama in missed votes. You must have shortened the measurement time to make Obama look good. It was just on cable news yesterday reported as percentages. Hillary has missed 23% of votes since she started running for president, while Obama has missed 56%. And 56% is more than twice as many votes skipped. Get the facts straight and tell them fairly!
- Posted by LillianIowaDemDidn’t Obama have some strange voting patterns in Illinois? I don’t remember the article exactly, but as I recall, the gist of it was that there were times he would vote “yes” on something. Then when he was criticized for the vote, he would say it was a mistake, and change the vote to “no” for the record, even though it didn’t count as a “no” in the tally. My recollection is that that didn’t happen just once or twice.
- Posted by JayA lot of folks missed votes, I was more surprised by the ones that didn’t miss a single one. I think it’s also worth mention that if a vote is going my way by a landslide or even the other way by a landslide, I’d not bother to vote. It’s probably more important that Hillary voted poorly one. That one vote going the way it did has cost us billions of dollars, reputation and thousands of young lives. Not to mention what it’ll cost us to re-intergrate surviving soldiers (some with disabilities now) back into society.
- Posted by AnnieOr Hillary’s vote with Bush to authorize the war. She didn’t miss That vote.
- Posted by DorothyThe year just started and this is a very short period of time. What were their records like last year? Or what have her records been like historically, in her 1st term?
- Posted by sdog44Planner - they didn’t vote - both Obama and Clinton skipped the vote and it passed.
- Posted by RobIn response to Katie, you’re right, overall in the 110th Congress, Clinton has missed 123 votes to Obama’s 178, according to washingtonpost.com’s count:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congr ess/110/senate/vote-missers/
Though it should be noted that, apart from Tim Johnson (who has not been present in the Senate chambers since Dec 2006 due to a brain hemorrhage), the top 7 vote-missers have all been in the 2008 presidential race. And it’s also important to distinguish between routine votes and important votes. Of course candidates will take time out of their campaign schedules to be there for important flagship votes that will come down to the wire, but many smaller measures would either pass of be defeated, regardless of whether they showed up.
The take-home lesson is that the workings of the Senate are complex and frankly rather boring, but can come back to bite you. Votes are set up to be catch-22s, with a “yea” vote meaning you’re voting for Raising Taxes and a “nay” vote meaning you’re voting against Our Children or Our Working Families or Our Troops. For Obama, add to that his “present” votes (which have been taken severely out of context by a clearly disingenuous Clinton campaign), and you can see why only 2 sitting senators have been elected to the Presidency in the last 130-odd years, even though there are always a gaggle of them running in each election.
- Posted by StuartObama voted against, Clinton voted for
- Posted by Mark, Brown Summit NC“Very awkward moment in the Hillary Clinton campaign today. I guess Hillary told her staff to call Democrats with money, and they called Barack Obama.” – Jay Leno
- Posted by ARKatie,
That’s stupid. They are talking about how many votes they have missed during their time of running for president. She wasn’t running for president when she was voting early in her senate career so of course she would win percentage wise. Why do you people have to act like this; I will be so glad when this is all over! I hate what I have learned about the people in my party during this primary and I will be switching to Independent. And as we all know, independents vote for Obama or McCain.
- Posted by Sidmorewell, you failed to tell us the most important piece of information. That is how they voted on this bill “empowering U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct domestic surveillance on terrorism suspects without court orders”.
- Posted by plannerI guess you think the voters are too dump to want to know something as important as that.
Considering the time each has been in the senate, how does his overall percentage of votes missed compare with hers. Just looking at short period of time and not considering the overall record seems misleading.
“Hillary Clinton may be falling behind rival Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but she has the lead in missed votes in the U.S. Senate so far this year.”
- Posted by Katie