On the July 28 edition of CNN's Crossfire, co-host Robert Novak fell in line with the Republican National Committee and other conservative pundits when he said the following to Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR): “Your ticket is the most liberal member of the Senate, [Senator John] Kerry, and the fourth most liberal, [Senator John] Edwards. Do you check your principles at the door when you're supporting a ticket like that?”

A July 26 op-ed in The New York Times cited an analysis of Kerry's lifetime record, revealing that, while Kerry falls in the liberal half of his party, he is still “closer to the center of the Democratic Party than he is to the most liberal senators”; Edwards's lifetime voting record, according to National Journal, places him squarely in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Media Matters for America has documented these facts on the numerous occasions this distortion has been put forward.