One of the interesting facts is that not only do Democrats in the Senate defect a lot more than Republicans on crucial votes, but they are doing it more often. Thirty Democrats who were around for 2008 have Progressive Punch scores that are less liberal than their career marks while only 16 are more liberal. Overall, we are losing an average of 2.5 votes on crucual votes due to this trend.
Liberals/Progressives are essentially showing no trend. Most scores are pretty close and a similar number are going up as going down. Regionally, 8 of the 16 with a rising score come from the Northeast. With the exception of Tom Harkin, all of those with a higher score come from Democratic states in Democratic regions, although you might quibble about Ohio.
Some of those with the biggest increases were big targets of the left who may have decided to move closer to their constituencies: Joe Lieberman went from a pathetic 68.49 career score to an OK 83.33. DiFi moved from 79.06 to 87.50. Tom Carper, a particular sore spot for me, went from 70.45 to 81.25. John Kerry showed some leadership moving from 82.52 to a really good 95.83.
You can take it to bank--whatever accusation conservative Republicans throw at liberal democrats, you can bet your last lonely dollar it's something they're guilty of themselves. And what did they scream louder in 2003 than, "I support the troops!" when the real question was, should we go to war, based on nothing at all? What did they accuse us of, when we asked, "Why the rush? Why not let the inspectors keep doing their jobs?" They said we didn't support the troops, that's what.
So guess what? Well, this much I'm sure you knew already, about the new GI Bill of Rights--you'd have to be watching the M$M not to know about this:
But did you realize that's only the tip of the iceberg? There was a nice reminder on Pacifica's Election Unspun this morning, with Aaron Glantz, saying that not only does McCain refuse to support the new GI Bill, he's also voted against a whole slew of efforts to increase health care and disability benefits for wounded soldiers? He also said that McCain has dismall ratings from as number of veterans groups. And lo, checking out Votesmart, I saw that it was so:
1989-1990 On the votes that the Vietnam Veterans of America considered to be the most important in 1989-1990 , Senator McCain voted their preferred position 50 percent of the time.
McCain's "maverick" mythos is partly pure bluff, and partly the result of how lockstep the GOP is, compared to the Democrats--a fact which, of course, is utterly obscured by the omnipresent "balance" myth, which requires, among other things, that both parties be treated as equally partisan and extreme. The pure bluff is covered by numerous bloggers noting his reversals on crucial "maverick" positions such as dissing the religious right, favoring a moderate immigration policy, and opposing torture.
But there is a bit of underlying temperamental truth there. McCain did rebel against the legacy of his father and grandfather--both admirals--and was a fairly insubordinate young officer, who left the Navy for politics at least partly because he was never going to make that rank himself. Of course, one could characterize that same temperament as "hot-headed," "erratic," "stubborn," nnd "unpredictable," as well.
But one thing a statistical view of McCain's record shows quite clearly--using figures from Progressive Punch: McCain looks a good deal more "moderate" and "independent" compared to other GOP Senators in large part because the GOP is a much more lock-step, and extreme party in the Senate than Democrats are.
This can be seen at glance in the following chart, where McCain's Progressive Punch scores are compared to the one standard deviation range of both parties, with the Democrats' range inverted (100->0, 99->1, etc.). While McCain generally shows up on the moderate side of the GOP range, he generally scores closer to the middle, and often more extreme on the Democrats' range:
One key to the McSame "Maverick" Myth is the incredible gap between the range of diversity in the two parties. The GOP is much more lock-step than the Democrats are, and as a result, McSame stands out as somewhat atypical in a way that he would not, if the Republicans were as diverse in their views as the Democrats are. This is not merely an qualitative observation on my part. It's something you can prove with cold, statistics. And that's just what I'll do on the flip, using Progressive Punch statistics.
Naturally, this sort of analysis is anathema to the Versailles media. For them, the balance myth is axiomatic. The notion that Democrats could be anything other than mirror images of the Republicans is not simply heresy, it's unthinkable. So, join me for a brief stroll through unthinkable land on the flip.
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...
About 50 years ago, Sugar Ray Robinson learned the fine art of boxing extra hard the last minute of each round. Sugar Ray impressed the judges mightily and improved his record. Guess he didn't have to get you down to win. Well, Republican Senators, except for the most troglodyte, are using that lesson to appear moderate and avoid some embarrassing votes.
Progressive Punch, as Paul noted recently, has added a "current session" rating to go with the career rating. The numbers for GOPer Senators up for election next year shows either a mass conversion or a political trick of the first order.
The 16 Republican Senators with the most moderate records in the class all showed a more liberal voting record in 2007 than for their career. None of the bottom six were as liberal in 2007 as for their career with the exception of the newly appointed Barrasso of Wyoming who has no previous record. Barraso's current record is bad enough. On average, the top 16 cast liberal votes in 2007 19.50% of the time; their career numbers waveraged 10.62%. Without further ado, here are the numbers (2007 first followed by career).
Progressive Punch has just announced the addition of a new tool for rating members of Congress, which should prove especially useful in getting a fix on different Democrats. It's called a "Chips Are Down" score and has just been calculated for the current congressional session.
The votes used to calculate the scores in the "Chips Are Down '07-'08" column are a subset of the overall votes that qualify according to the Progressive Punch algorithm described above. They 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. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined 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).
One of the most common responses to the Bush Dog campaign is that "You don't live here; you don't know what you're talking about; you want to elect a liberal Democrat to this district; and it can't be done; we'd end up losing in a landslide."
That's a big mouthful, and ordinarily I'm the kind of guy who would sit down to parse it, and answer its various parts. But I'm not going to do that in this diary. Instead, I'm going for the heart of the argument--that this is the sort of Democrat we have to run to win in this kind of district. I'm going to refute that assumption in the most straightforward way possible: I'm going to compare Bush Dogs to non-Bush Dogs in fairly similar districts.
The analysis will clearly show that it's the members, not the districts that are the problem.
Spurred on by David Kowalski offering Progressive Punch scores in a comment, I've done another iteration of this table, which is now dominated by the Progressive Punch scores for all the issue categories. Color coding is used for Progressive Punch scores, grouping by deciles, descending from moderate to light blue, and then from light to moderate red.
I have two versions of the table over the jump. The first maintains the alphabetical order within battleground tiers, the second is in descending order of Progressive Punch total scores, again within battleground tiers. The second is particularly helpful for seeing the relative conservatism of different members at a glance.
I believe this provides the most comprehensive visual overview of the overall political orientations of the Bush Dogs to date. It is very clear that the Bush Dogs are particularly bad on Family Planning and on Civil and Criminal Justice issues. Average scores on other issues range from the low 90s (Housing) to the low 70s (Human Rights & Liberties, Corporate Subsidies), but then drops precipitously to the mid 50s for Civil and Criminal Justice and the high 40s for Family Planning.
However, even for Government Checks on Corporate Power, where the overal average is in the mid 70s, there are three Safe District Bush Dogs who score under 50%--Boren, Peterson and Cuellar.
STATE BLOGS
