A diverse group of 16 Senate Democrats today announced the formation of a new moderate coalition that will meet regularly to shape public policy. The group’s goal is to work with the Senate leadership and the new administration to craft common-sense solutions to urgent national problems.Thinkprogress postulates about the 3-4 who are attending but who don't wish to be "publicly identified" but Thinkprogress guesses anyway:The Moderate Dems Working Group will meet every other Tuesday before the Democratic Caucus lunch to discuss legislative strategies and ideas. The Moderate Dems held their second meeting Tuesday to focus on the upcoming budget negotiations and the importance of passing a fiscally responsible spending plan in the Senate.
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-PA)This got me to wondering exactly HOW "moderate" these three are. And how does one tell? And what is a "moderate" anway? Such questions are notoriously difficult to answer.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Enter Civic Science.
The folks over there at Civic Science do a number of different things but the part that I find most interesting is the section that generates numbers and graphs to illustrate where people stand in the political spectrum. By looking at complete voting records of each member of Congress, propensity of that member to vote with or against their own party, and various "legislative scorecards" they're able to generate numbers. How liberal, how conservative and so on.
They place the data on a relative scale where the most liberal is given a score of L100 and the most conservative a C100. The middle is equidistant from each end. By answering a few questions you find out where you stand in the spectrum. For example, right now my score is L51. I am about midway between the middle of the spectrum and the farthest right.
So how do Casey, Klobuchar, and Pryor stand? Take a look:
The "You" on the graph is me. The "Community" is the average of everyone who's answered the polling questions at Civic Science. Take a look at a few things. According to their voting records, Senators Casey and Klobuchar are farther to the left than I am.Yea, I am surprised about that, too. I didn't think anyone in the Senate was further to the left than I was (Ok, maybe Bernie Sanders, but he's a Socialist, for God's sake! His Civic Science Score is 73, by the way.). But what of the rest of the "Blue Dog" Senators? Take a look:
Still surprising. Am I really right in the middle of all those "moderate" Senators? These scores for the Senators, though, are averages for all their voting records. So I wondered if there was any set of issues where they might be someplace between me and the Civic Science community?Luckily, Civic Science breaks down the numbers further. I'll spare you the details and the graphics, but suffice it to say that I am generally in the middle of the pack (with more or less equal numbers of Senators to the left and right of me) when the issues are:
- Business
- Energy and the Environment
- Government
- Health Issues
- Social Issues
- Education, Labor and Infrastructure
- Defense and Foreign Policy
- Science and Technology
- Second Amendment
Or maybe I am.
I'm looking forward to fiddle with the site a bit. I think it would be interesting to see a similar "fingerprint" of who's supporting/not supporting a particular piece of legislation.
UPDATE: I made an error in the original version of this posting. I initially said that I was to the right of all the Senators when it comes to Second Amendment issues. That was a mistake. I am to the LEFT of all the Senators when it comes to Second Amendment issues.
The posting has been corrected.
5 comments:
I am to the right of ALL the Senators when it comes to:
* Second Amendment
WTF????????
Wait a minute I thought the progressive talking point that Santorum was ousted by Casey because PA now embraces progressive ideals.
Wait - let me check this one.
I may have made an error on this.
HTTT;
You caught me in a mistake. I didn't check things thoroughly enough and a BIG error slipped through.
I'll correct it now.
HTTT;
I corrected my error.
I registered there and did my own 'spectrum' and I have some major questions:
They have the 'community' as being right of center.
Who is the community? Pittsburghers? Southwestern PAers? US citizens? No freaking clue.
Self-selected online poll takers? Then it's largely invalid as compared to the real community of Pittsburghers/Southwestern PAers/US citizens. If the poll is only taken by people who have a computer and access to the Internet, it is already skewed to middle class and up.
Was the 'community' weighted demographically for sex, age, location, race? If not, then, again, invalid.
This is supposed to be based on the politician's voting record, no? Has there been some sort of straight up vote on abortion since Casey's been in office that I missed? (The abortion question was more-or-less straight up.) If he's being, say, called a liberal because he thinks there shouldn't be a international gag rule to give money for birth control vs. whether he thinks that women have a right to abortion (a vote not taken) then what the hell does it say on his opinion of abortion? I believe the answer is NOTHING.
Is the whole of his relatively short voting record being judged against the decades of Specters? Apples and oranges.
Moreover, a poll is merely a snapshot in time. How long has the 'community' had to vote in this poll? Days? Weeks? Months? For example, would Lil Mayor Luke's favorable numbers differ if a poll was taken when he's standing by the police chief after the recent tragedy vs. the day it was revealed he paid for $1,000 trash cans? Would the 'community's' answers differ (if only slightly) about Iraq the day Bin Laden issues a video vs. when Obama says we're not at war with Islam? Polls are pulled in the field all the time when some breaking story happens that might affect their outcome.
Yeah, like I said, I have some MAJOR questions...
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