Fake news I'm sure.

He still is rated as an "A". Or is that not good enough?

and speaking out about important issues to old and young alike. Please explain how that is somehow a bad thing?

His division of the party is a big reason we have Trump.

made up, however I completely disagree with your assessment.

He simply gave the 45% of us who typically don't get heard a voice loud enough for you to finally take note of.

That 45% was here long before Sanders threw his hat into the ring -- hell, it was here before the DLC, so-called "New Dems," Third Way, and the Clintonite faction -- and we aren't going away just because the centrists tell us to go sit in the corner again and eat our peas.

Some people believe Third Way DLC centrists roam the earth, perhaps huddling in craggy mountain caves and deep rainforests, yearning to once again "tell us to go sit in the corner again and eat our peas." There are sightings now and again.

Been here since 2004. I even remember the days when DU was firmly united in opposition to Shrub, and not fawning over him because he shared a piece of candy.

But . . . . just as life changes, so do the prevailing winds at DU. Just like they will again eventually. Don't get too comfortable in your catbird seat.

... it's easy to forget the lyrics... or the tune... it happens to everyone, I've heard.

and that feeds a narrative that any other progressive who dissents or disagrees with that person - even on the tiniest thing - is "corrupt" and "corporatist" then "that" becomes a bad thing.

Especially in this point in our history.

That strategy got a murderous autocrat elected in the Ukraine.

Would love to see that graph with Hillary in it.

"Would love to see that graph with Hillary in it."

So, I did a quick google and found that Kos had referenced it in 2007.

(you're welcome)

the LIE that she wasnt progressive enough worked.

I believe that sums up my response as well.

Up there with "I know you are, but what am I?" in terms of intellectual discourse.

A murderous autocrat got elected using those very tactics - that's a fact.

Or "rubbish" as you call that fact.

I simply believe your argument to be rubbish.

You have your opinion and I have mine.

That's where we differ, apparently.

Viktor Yanukovych, was indeed a murderous autocrat, and was indeed elected using those tactics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bernie-sanders-ad-man-who-played-paul-manaforts-game/2018/08/01/0df78c18-95c7-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html

When did he claim to be the only one, or the first to have "progressive ideas"?

I'm sure there also are hundreds, if not thousands of examples of many DUers claiming Sanders is the only one, or the first to have "progressive ideas".

by searching "Bernie is the only one." Many were posted in 2015-2016, so I won't link to them here, for obvious reasons.

You can also google ("democratic party has a choice" "bernie sanders" "Wall Street" ) and you will find some claims.

And certainly he was touted by many as the first Senator proposing "Single Payer," and that he, and not the Democratic leadership is promoting Universal Health Care.

There are examples of posts where people post a video of Bernie calling Trump a liar, with the caption that he is saying "what many won't."

A google of the internet of "Bernie Sanders" "the only progressive" will also bring up links for you.

That covers both claims- is that clearer for you?

Here is the reference to the murderous autocrat who got elected making the claims that he was the one candidate who was for the "working man" and against the "corporatists."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bernie-sanders-ad-man-who-played-paul-manaforts-game/2018/08/01/0df78c18-95c7-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html?utm_term=.41ac1699f515

Including posting an op-ed by Dana (I voted for John McCain) Milbank.

Is today Hyperbole Friday?

I tried.

more PROGRESSIVE who I like Exponentially Better.

and that the Democrats are "centrists" and "corporatists" and so there being 10 Democrats more progressive than he is undermines that claim.

This was about creating an argument and a dig, nothing more.

I am also a big Kamala Harris fan.

What a strange post.

start an argument.

Just posting the ratings would have been neutral, but someone had to get their little dig in to try to start something.

was what it was all really about.

I'm so tired of a small group of people who have to make everything about slamming Sanders.

A discussion about which senators are most (or least) liberal might be an interesting discussion. But becauuse the OP had to throw Sanders under the bus, the entire thread is now arguments back and forth about Sanders.

there are a bunch of people who have A ratings. That is good. It isn't a contest and there is no reason to be snotty about it.

that if 2016 is repeated in 2020...

we are all fucked

AGAIN

is really the best way to do this?

Fact is the vast majority of people here at DU voted for Clinton, whether they supported her in the primary or not. Still being angry at those who preferred a different primary candidate is not productive in any way, but I get the sense that there are several people who are still angry that primaries are even a thing.

what.

hurt his progressive score, if I recall. As well as his vote to confirm Kelly at Homeland Security when Gillebrand, Booker, Harris and Warren did not

That makes him a partial progressive.

I can see you will never get why Bernie gets the support he does. A hater hates.

Hint: Its not because of some third party poll or opinion on how his "progressive" rating fares with them.


Just like I don't like Kamala Harris just because she is rated #1.

She's 31st? I don't know about that. She ran as a liberal. Votes as a liberal, except for military issues, and given her background, understandable. But, she's hardly a hawk despite being a war veteran.

I get that they are weighting based upon which state they're from and IL is very blue, but something seems amiss when Tammy Duckworth is 31st on this list.

It's all explained in the write-up below the chart.

I still think it's too low.

The state tilts to the northeast. A big part of the state actually voted for Alan Keyes over Obama "tilts" dem, but it's not all dem.

I'm quite certain there are huge swaths of land south of me that don't like her because she's a "librul".

I like Duckworth very much, but looking at her "crucial votes" and "overall votes" numbers in relation to senators above and below her in the list, and taking into account her state that has a "strong dem" tilt," her grade and ranking look to be about right.

I'm sure most people are pissed their favorite senator doesn't have a higher score.

Could be worse: Take a look at poor Di Fei.

Especially in the house.

Very handy link, however.

I am assuming she missed some number of votes in the 12 weeks she took for maternity leave. Those counted against her under their methodology.

Opinion piece. Thanks for posting.

Also, it shows that the "least progressive" Dem, as frustrating is it sometimes may be, is still miles better than the closest Rep. Even those Rs who are seen as sane or swing votes for crucial issues are far away from Dems like Manchin. Especially now in the age of Trump as the difference between the lifetime voting record vs. the current year shows.

it's better to have somebody vote with the Democrats 70 or 80% of the time as opposed to a Republican who votes with the Democrats 0-10% of the time.

The angry progressives who keep spouting "Republican Lite" need to see that.

either way. Think she's great and now more so.

She's our best bet for 2020!!

prisons.

We know that how much support a district's voters give progressivism is going to have a tremendous effect on their rep's voting pattern. We also know that representatives particularly need to vote to please the voters in election years and on issues important to them at all times.

Yet Democratic house reps are given scores from A to D with almost all districts labeled "strong Democrat." We know that can't be true.

We also know that not all Democratic districts are blue: some are red. Shouldn't they have a separate designation for those "strong Democrat" districts that are actually "strong conservative" instead of "strong liberal," such as in WV and KY?

Is there anything else wrong with this? Frankly, this long list of Democrats comes across as a hit job on the Democratic Party through misrepresentation. It suggests many of these congressmen are not representing their constituencies at all.

The fact is that to be liberal is virtually always to be a strong believer in progressivism, so much so that it's redundant to point it out. It's been that way ever since the establishment of our nation's liberal progressive government and our liberal-dominated party's first establishment as Jefferson's and Madison's Democratic Republican Party.

being progressive in a red district.

But they show their methodology and what votes they use to determine it. Then people can draw their own conclusions.

explanation, Pnwmom. They know most people don't know how to read this, or won't take the time, and will just go away with a bad impression.

They have a duty to minimize that quick-impression hazard, not design to maximize it in a way that can only benefit party opponents, wherever they are ideologically. Unless, of course, creating it is part of their agenda.

Your'e right. Something is off with this presentation.

The letter grade is just a way to give some people more or less credit based on how easy or difficult it is to be progressive in their districts.

It's a way to compare numerical scores based on how left or right leaning your district is. So someone in a red district with a score of 85 might get a higher letter grade than someone with a 90 in an highly progressive blue district. The 90 meant the blue rep voted as a progressive more often. But the Red district person might have been taking more risks in his district, just to get the 85.

Best seen as an indication not fact

My Congress fool would be most disappointed to see his less than perfect Nazi rating..
Would probably wanna find some kittens to kill to improve his score

This is useful but it should be noted that under their system no Democrat in a state that is strong Republican should be able to be elected (as opposed to reelected) if they are going to have a positive score. By any reasonable measure someone who supports the progressive position 70 percent of the time would be a moderate liberal and that person would have virtually no chance of winning an open seat in a strong GOP state.

Mahalo, JaneQ

is.. mg.

I guess I'll click the link later and see for myself. .

and Bernie about the 11th.

than everyone else is just flat out wrong.

this is definitive proof of anything. Why do you have no problem with how these scores are derived?

Bernie loses some points for his gun votes and a couple other things.

Elizabeth Warren, for example, doesn't. If you don't like it, lump it.

generate, that they have entire gaps of scoring related to progressives who may be going against the grain of their party. Those don't get figured in at all to these numbers. For that matter, if you had a progressive reason for siding against a bill that republicans were mostly against for other reasons, you would still be counted negatively.

So what I object to is anybody using this as a validation for their favs being the most progressive...you included....even though the study is designed in such a way that would absolutely benefit those who vote party line the most often. That is not the same thing as the most progressive. Why don't they just call it what it is? A litmus test of how often you vote party line, or apparently as somebody else pointed out, with the most progressive members of your party...whatever the hell that means, since that gets into an ouroboros kind of scenario. How can you use the study's findings to arrive at the study's findings?

Can you genuinely argue that that is the best way to make this assessment? If you really believe that, then I guess more power to you for espousing this study as proof of these senators being the most progressive, but without a better argument being put forward than I've heard so far, I find that reasoning unsound.

As I said before, all the scores in the top group are similar, including his. But the people who claim he is the very most purely pure progressive have to ignore his gun votes, among others.

they did. They can do the measuring themselves.

But the sites scoring does give extra credit for living in a red state and espousing progressive views. That's why some red staters got higher letter grades than they would just based on their numerical scores alone.

posters have demonstrated is good enough for them, without even looking into that scoring system. You point out something they did take into account. I keep explaining to you a glaring element that they have intentionally ignored even though they know its an issue. Yet they are happy to report their findings as determining who the most "progressive" public servants are, even though by the very nature of their scoring system, it would reward votes which conform to party over votes which break from it, as a rule, regardless of the issue on the table. That's just outright silly, unless that's the story you intentionally want to tell. Its just too damn obvious, and hard for me not question the motives of those who crafted the methodology.

are so close. What difference does it make if someone is at 98% or 96%? No difference, in my view. But it can be useful to see which votes produces the scores they got. If a particular issue is important to you, and that person voted against it, then you might not like them no matter how well they did on other issues.

I do think that the site is a good answer to anyone who is convinced that some single Democrat or Independent is head and shoulders above everyone else. That just isn't true. There are a lot of Democrats who consistently vote for the progressive position.

That surprised me!

a "koch brothers puppet."

for the Koch Bros and Walmart very recently for daring to say that Senator Sanders was mistaken.

It's not a stretch to think that such or similar smearing will be applied to any entity that goes against the idea that he isn't the MOST PROGRESSIVE Senator of ALL.

Your post makes my point.

Is that clearer?

The ad hominem flaming continues.

for your gratuitous slam.

It's simply a reflection of a view commonly expressed by political pundits that Bernie is the pol furthest left on the political spectrum.

similar margin as Texas.

He is expected to win reelection easily by double digits. I have this feeling that trying to appeal to Republicans by being more conservative isn't a helpful strategy. This idea that Bernie was too extreme to win the general election is hogwash.

But some people just feel the irrational need to hate on Sanders. I don't get it, he didn't inspire me, but he clearly inspired a lot of people and I'd like them to keep voting.

I now question what this organization is about, as they have given some solid Dems an F rating, some a D, and that includes people who are very popular at DU for their outspokenness in defense of the US Constitution and democratic institutions.

What gives?

by always voting with the mainstream of the Democratic Party, that has to assume then that the mainstream of the democratic party is ALWAYS in favor of and voting for, as a body, the most progressive legislation. And when you vote to the left of that party...say because it has found some middle ground to court a handful of republicans(which, how do you do that with anything that is decent these days), then you lose points in progressivism according to this metric.


You kind of need more than to simply declare that your study is a determinant of the most progressive legislators. You kind of need a study that is actually designed to arrive at that result. Sure, its a subjective measure, but the model being employed iis absurdly simplistic and easily called into doubt.


Holy shit....seriously straight from their own webpage:

""The Progressive Position" by definition, is the position of the majority of the Progressives. "

What the fuck does that even mean? Who is being included? What's the criteria? Having a high progressivepunch score? That's hilarious, and seems to me incredibly disingenuous, given that a conservative score is tallied based on "Republican" legislators, yet a progressive score is tallied according to "progressive" legislators.

Voting with the most progressive members would.

Defining progressive is somewhat subjective but the founder of the site sounds like he is legit.

https://progressivepunch.org/aboutUs.htm

He is also a contributor to 538.

little bit circular?

In fact, in the notes, the study acknowledges the opposite of what you just said, that outliers that don't have support will not be counted as progressive in this study. They specifically address Barbara Lee and a stance she took that would not be figured into these numbers.

This is great news we have more and more liberal Senators. He isn't the only Senator I approve of.