Progressive Punch Recalibrates "Chips Are Down"--Shows Dems Vary Widely

by: Paul Rosenberg

Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 13:03

Progressive Punch has made a significant change to it's new "Chips Are Down" ranking system, and released the followed statement:

Sophisticated Congressional Vote Scoring Shows Democrats Vary Widely
For Immediate Release 2/20/08:
ProgressivePunch.org is announcing a dramatic software patch to its ?Chips are Down? progressive ranking system of key votes enabling citizens to hold members of Congress accountable for their voting records starting with keeping sophisticated tabs on their behavior.
Due to an earlier programming error, "Chips Are Down '07-'08" scores for Democrats displayed on Progressive Punch prior to February 13, 2008 were previously inflated. Corrected Chips Are Down scores now demonstrate more clearly than ever how some Democrats vote with Republicans on key votes. For example, on the corrected ranking of Chips Are Down scores, Democrat Jim Marshall of Georgia ranks below two Republicans, Ron Paul & Wayne Gilchrest (recently defeated in a primary by a right-winger). While Republicans are pretty uniformly terrible, Democrats now range from Tammy Baldwin's 97+% down to Marshall's 28%.

Progressive Punch's statement continues on the flip...

Paul Rosenberg :: Progressive Punch Recalibrates "Chips Are Down"--Shows Dems Vary Widely

Progressive Punch statement, continued:

Chips Are Down votes show the impact that even a small number of Democrats have when they defect from the progressive position. These are votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. Progressive Punch defines narrow progressive victories as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result). Initially the programming was incorrectly set at a margin of 40 votes instead of 20 for progressive victories to qualify in the House. Because this was a brand new category of votes for us and the initial percentages seemed plausible, we didn?t spot the error right away.
The percentage scores ARE NOW CORRECTED. The total number of votes in 2007 that qualified for Chips Are Down was 154 in the House and 167 in the Senate. After we catch up with a programming backlog, we will post the specific roll call vote numbers of the votes that qualified for inclusion on Chips Are Down scores.
· Chips Are Down scores for the Senate: [Here]
· Chips Are Down scores for the House: [Here]
· Chips Are Down scores from the ProgressivePunch.org home page: Click on the "Select by Score" function underneath letter A) Search by Members of Congress, click on either Senate or House, and then click Search.

Tags: Progressive Punch, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, voting records, (All Tags)

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Progressive Punch Recalibrates "Chips Are Down"--Shows Dems Vary Widely | 5 comments

I'm Working On A Little Something For This Weekend, Using PP Data (4.00 / 2)

So I'd like to encourage folks to go look around for themselves ahead of time. They provide a very valuable resource for all of us.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 18:05:57 PM UTC

by: you @ soon

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I'm pleased to see cloture votes included in the data (0.00 / 0)

I don't think they have enough weight.

It seems to me that a Senator that voting for cloture and then voting against a passing bill should be counted as three votes for the bill.

One for the cloture, one for the bill, and one for trying to have it both ways.

by: jello5929 @ Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 21:22:46 PM UTC

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Some quibbles in the data (0.00 / 0)

I attempted to go through, issue by issue, and compare Clinton to Obama just for kicks. I ended up with more questions than answers.

The first thing I noticed was that the same votes pop up redundantly in multiple categories. Does that mean that if a Senator votes "wrong" on that vote that his/her rating is reduced by as many different categories as the vote appears?

Also, I noticed that ratings are impacted by absences. Are absences treated the same as bad votes? What about absences on votes where the Senator's vote would not have swung the outcome? There is a category called "close votes, but I think the definition is sorta arbitrary; let's face it, Senators can find out a whip count and know for real whether their vote is needed.

Also, many "wrong votes" are on roll calls that are hugely lopsided, like 82-18 or some such. There are many "real world" reasons for voting with the majority on those sorts of votes. When votes go that way, it often means, for example, that the final bill was the result of a legislative compromise. In this environment where progressives, like it or not, do not have majority control, we often have to pass the best bill available. Except in rare cases, the public won't accept gridlock. This becomes a leadership issue, not one that can be hung on individual senators. Do these ratings reward progressives who help enact good legislation more than the ones who stand and cast lonely "symbolic" votes?

The data might be more useful if they listed, in tabular form for each "wrong" vote, how many democrats voted for the "progressive" position, or perhaps how many total votes the progressive position received (and if more than 51 were needed, to supply that information as well). My $.02.

Obviously a wealth of raw information.

by: Ron in Chicago @ Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 23:14:59 PM UTC

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Dick Durban > Bernie Sanders? (0.00 / 0)

The fundamental flaw here, as with all such rating systems, is that you can not ascribe an ideology to a person based on their actions. It's entirely possible, and indeed it's common, for two people to do the same thing for entirely different reasons. Since progressivism is an ideology, and ideologies are what inform our decision making, any attempt to ascribe ideology to action is putting the cart before the horse.

It seems like this should be absurdly obvious but people keep trumpeting these purity test scores like they mean something so I guess it's not.

The assorted wiki based resources that attempt to collect information about the actual beliefs of politicians are somewhat better, but they still ultimately tell you as much about the person collating the information as they do about their subjects.

by: Velvet Elvis @ Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 23:42:34 PM UTC

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Gosh! Imperfection In Sub-Sublanry Sphere! Ye Gads! (0.00 / 0)

Well, one way to deal with such messiness is simply to declare that pi=3 and be done with it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Thu Feb 28, 2008 at 00:49:23 AM UTC

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