Which Congressional Democrats are progressive enough?

Progressive Punch has added a new and incredibly useful layer of analysis to its rankings of members of Congress by voting record.

The “Select by Score” pages now indicate how progressive representatives and senators are compared to the districts and states they represent.

Select by Score Senate rankings

Select by Score House rankings

As before, you see members of the House and Senate ranked from most progressive to least progressive, based on all votes as well as on certain “crucial votes.” Calculating a separate score for “crucial votes” reveals which Democrats are not reliable when the chips are down. This helps prevent gaming of the system, as when Joe Lieberman voted against filibustering Samuel Alito’s nomination for the Supreme Court, then turned around and voted against confirming him.

For the new feature, Progressive Punch has placed every state and Congressional district into one of five categories: strong D, lean D, swing, lean R, and strong R. Each Congress-critter’s “crucial vote” score is then compared to the political lean of the district or state. In the right-hand column on the “Select by Score” pages, every member of Congress now has a rating from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most progressive. Progressive Punch explains:

The “%” and “Rating” columns underneath the “Progressive Score vs. State Tilt” are two different ways of measuring the same thing. They both measure how naughty or nice a member of Congress’ voting record has been in relation to his/her district. We’re grading on a curve. Five stars in the “Rating” column indicate members of Congress who are doing the best in terms of voting MORE progressively than could necessarily be expected given their states or districts. Those with one star are performing the worst in relation to their districts.

For more details on the methodology behind this analysis, click here for House ratings and here for Senate ratings.

Why is this useful? It’s now much easier to see which Democrats in Congress are voting about as well as could be expected, and which ones should be doing a lot better.  

Here are a few examples. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid have identical lifetime progressive scores on crucial votes. However, since Feinstein represents a strong Democratic state (CA) and Reid represents a swing state (NV), Feinstein gets a 1 while Reid gets a 3.

Ron Wyden (OR), Barbara Mikulski (MD) and Amy Klobuchar (MN) have very similar lifetime scores, but Wyden and Klobuchar get 4s because they represent lean-Democrat states. Mikulski gets a 3 when graded on a curve that takes into account Maryland’s solid Democratic profile.

Similarly, Daniel Inouye (HI) gets a 1, while Jon Tester (MT) gets a 3 for almost the same “crucial vote” score, because Montana leans Republican.

Jeff Bingaman (NM), Jim Webb (VA) and Byron Dorgan (ND) have very similar progressive lifetime scores, but Bingaman gets a 2 for representing a lean-Democrat state, Webb gets a 3 for representing a swing state, and Dorgan gets a 4 for representing a lean-Republican state.

Scanning down the Select by Score House page, a few Democrats stand out. There’s Timothy Bishop (NY-01) with a 5 rating for how he represents his swing district, while most of the House members with similar lifetime scores get 3s, because they represent strong Democratic districts.

Dave Obey (WI-07) and Peter DeFazio (OR-04) get 4s because they represent lean-Democrat districts. Most of the House members with similar lifetime progressive scores get 3s.

Amid a large group of House Democrats who get a 2 when their crucial vote score is compared to how strongly Democratic their districts are, James Oberstar (MN-08) gets a 4 for a similar progressive score because he represents a swing district, while Michael Michaud (ME-02) and Paul Hodes (NH-02) get a 3 because their districts lean Democratic.

How can progressives use this information? One way would be to determine which incumbents in safe Democratic seats should face more pressure from the left. In extreme cases, this pressure could include a primary challenge.

Also, these rankings reveal which Democratic primaries should become top priorities for progressives when incumbents retire. For example, John Murtha (PA-12) and Henry Cuellar (TX-28) represent strongly Democratic districts but vote like Democrats representing swing or Republican districts.

I discussed Iowa representatives’ rankings in more detail at Bleeding Heartland. The relatively low score for Leonard Boswell (IA-03) was no surprise, but Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) didn’t fare much better when graded on the Progressive Punch curve that took into account their strongly Democratic districts.

32 thoughts on “Which Congressional Democrats are progressive enough?”

  1. These ratings are terribly skewed in favor of Democrats in strongly democratic districts and against Democrats in Republican districts, at least if the intent is “to see which Democrats in Congress are voting about as well as could be expected, and which ones should be doing a lot better.”  The fact that almost all the top scorers are disproportionately from strong democratic districts and no one from strong or even lean republican districts scores well shows that this is not a true test of how progressive you can expect a representative to vote.  The problem is the arbitrary number they use for each type of district against which the rep is measured.  A much better measure would be to average the progressive punch score for all (R and D) reps from each type of district and use this number as the measure for what to expect.

  2. I’m in FL-24 and my new Rep. Suzanne Kosmas has been ever better than I thought she’d be  in her short time in the house thus far.  She has a near perfect progressive punch score and this is a district Obama narrowly lost.  I’m extremely happy with her record so far.

  3. turn this into an opportunity to pimp my own diary (from a year ago), but I took a different quantitative approach to this same question and got some very different answers. I’m glad Progressive Punch is taking this step and I like the way it’s displayed, but let’s do some compare and contrast here so we can talk about the best way to quantify this problem (because it’s a very important one in the blogosphere, since, as you said, it helps us decide who to pressure and who, in fact, to primary).

    Take Donna Edwards, who Progressive Punch says is great according to this measure. Well, she is great, but she’s freakin’ supposed to be great. She’s one of the most liberal members of the House, and she’s in one of the most liberal districts in the House. Intuitively, she should therefore be in the middle of the pack; she’s right where a regression line of voting record vs. district lean would put her.

    On the other hand, take Chet Edwards, who sucks according to this measure… but who, according to my measure, is the representative who’s most overperforming his district. He’s in one of the most conservative districts in the country, and yet he’s slightly to the left of the House’s midpoint. Still, he’s undifferentiated under this method from guys like Jim Cooper and John Barrow who are bad votes in Dem-leaning districts… and considered worse than guys like Artur Davis and Kendrick Meek, who are centrist votes in some of our most liberal districts.

    At a minimum, I’d like to see the criteria they used to decide how to break down ‘strong/leaning/swing,’ and how they decided on 83/80/76/73/70 as the cutoff points. But mostly, by using only 5 boxes to put people in, it’s not a granular-enough sort, as the techies among us might say.

  4. Not just in AA districts where it’s heavily Democrat but not liberal would also be areas where the local area is heavily Democrat but at the national level it’s closer.

    MN-08 Oberstar was mentioned and that’s an excellent example.  Sure, Oberstar votes pretty above what the district would dictate but I can hardly call his seat a swing seat.  When it opens up, the DFL will be heavily favored, regardless of Presidential vote total.  Every state legislature and senator in that CD is from the DFL (except maybe in the southern portion of the district) and the only real reason for the closeness are social issues.  So if you weren’t to count what the presidential vote total was but more so general district make up, I’d give him a 3 as he is doing what is satisfactory for the district, liberal on all issues but social ones.  

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