Sen. Obama: Not Really That Liberal?  Jeff Zeleny stretches hard
to position Barack Obama as a more moderate candidate.  In his
profile of Sen. Barack Obama, former Chicago Tribune-reporter-
turned-Timesman Jeff Zeleny stretches hard to position Obama as
not really that liberal, searching for instances in his brief
voting record in which the Illinois senator wasn't a reliable
liberal vote. In fact, the only time the Times seems to
recognize liberals is when the paper is trying to center a
potential Democratic presidential candidate (see Clinton,
Hillary).   Mickey Kaus at Slate calls it a "comical" attempt to
position Obama as an independent thinker, and Tom Maguire notes:
"So Obama boldly stood with a mere 86 fellow Senators...."
However, TimesWatch appreciates Zeleny's previous paragraph, in
which he actually measures a liberal politicians' political
slant, which goes against the paper's usual practice of either
calling liberal politicians "moderates" or not giving them an
ideological label at all.  "Accord