With holiday travel beginning this weekend, weather and traffic have been the big headlines today, even on the campaign trail.
But if you insist on something substantive, take a look at this New York Times article on Barack Obama's voting record during his time in the Illinois legislature. Turns out he voted "present" rather than "yes" or "no" a whopping 130 times, and "In at least a few cases, the issue was politically sensitive."
How significant is this really, though? That's hard to say. Those 130 votes are out of about 4,000 total. And the Times acknowledges that in more than 50 of them Obama seemed to be voting strategically, together with his fellow Democrats. And only 36 present votes were cast by him alone or as part of a group of six or fewer. And voting "present" isn't an unusual practice in Illinois ... . So it's atually rather difficult to determine just how "few" politically sensitive cases the Times actually uncovered.
Regardless, given how critical Obama has been of Hillary Clinton's hawkish voting record - for the Iraq war, for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran - it's no surprise that the Clinton campaign has pounced on this report as evidence of Obama's legislative cowardice.
