Today, Keystone politics bloggers Jon Geeting and Ryan O'Donnell announced a new project called Primary Colors, a scoring system that can be used to identify which incumbent Democrats deserve a primary because their voting record is too conservative for their districts.
Here's how Jon Geeting described the scoring system:
Our new scoring system, launching in just a few weeks, will assign each Democratic member of Congress a primary score between 0 and 10. The higher the score, the more deserving of a primary challenge.
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We arrive at these primary scores through a two-step process: First, by weighting and averaging various partisan scores like DW-Nominate, Progressive Punch, and National Journal, we get a very clear picture of each member’s voting habits. Then we compare that value to other members representing similar districts in the current Congress. This is crucial, since members aren’t being judged against some woolly progressive ideal. A Democrat representing a district with a D+4 partisan lean is compared to other Democrats in D+4 districts — and the more conservative they are than those colleagues, the higher their primary score. This, along with the rest of our methodology, creates an algorithm which allows activists to find out where they can replace Democrats too conservative for their state or district with real progressives — with little to no fear of losing to said seat to Republicans.
I'll be curious to see the ultimate design of their scoring system because many of the other ones often seem flawed. For instance, National Journal ranked Bernie Sanders as the
32nd most liberal senator for 2012. When I saw that, I broke out laughing. Either the person doing the number crunching was under the influence, or their system fails to understand what it means to oppose legislation from the left. A large part of National Journal's flaws likely stems from the latter because they view votes through a rigid binary framework. Take, for instance, the
Budget Control Act. Both Ben Nelson and Bernie Sanders opposed it; however, Nelson likely opposed it for the same reasons that 19 Republican senators did--i.e. that the cuts weren't steep enough. Gillibrand, Merkley, Harkin, Lautenberg, and Menendez also opposed the bill from the left.
Scoring systems also suffer from an inability to address the influence of senators in shaping the terms of the debate, whether by introducing legislation that never gets to a vote or by shaping the legislation that ultimately does. For the latter reason, Chuck Schumer often gets rated as far more liberal than he really is.
The key shortcoming of the DW Nominate system, in my opinion, is its exclusive use of lifetime scores. This focus makes it impossible to track an individual politician's ideological evolution over time. One of the best examples of this is the case of Kirsten Gillibrand, who went from being a Blue Dog Democrat from upstate New York to a liberal Democrat representing the full state in the Senate. Because the DW Nominate system does not reflect this transition, it portrays Gillibrand as much to the right of her current ideological lean.
Nevertheless, I look forward to the full roll-out of the website. Currently, the teaser website identifies the 58 Democrats who deserve a primary based on their score. From writing diaries on recent House votes, I can say that they've done a good job at identifying Democrats who are far too conservative for their home districts.
Who are the 58?
Primary Colors identifies 6 Democrats who must be primaried because they vote far more conservatively than their districts would suggest. They all have a primary score of 9 or 10.
Henry Cuellar (TX-28): 10
Sean Maloney (NY-18): 10
Filemon Vela (TX-34): 9
Bill Owens (NY-21): 9
Jim Costa (CA-16): 9
Cheri Bustos (IL-17): 9
Primary Colors identifies 6 Democrats who should be primaried because their voting behavior is "beyond repair" and they need to be replaced. They all have scores between 6 and 8.
Sanford Bishop (GA-02): 6
Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02): 6
Daniel Maffei (NY-24): 6
Jim Cooper (TN-05): 6
Scott Peters (CA-52): 6
Bill Foster (IL-11): 6
Next are 26 Democrats who could be primaried because they break with progressive values too often. They all received scores between 3 and 5.
Terri Sewell (AL-07): 5
Gary Peters (MI-14): 5
Gene Green (TX-29): 5
Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01): 5
Marc Veasey (TX-33): 4
Daniel Lipinski (IL-03: 4
Juan Vargas (CA-51): 4
Bradley Schneider (IL-10): 4
Tammy Duckworth (IL-08): 4
David Scott (GA-13): 4
Adam Smith (WA-09): 3
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02): 3
Pete Gallego (TX-23): 3
Eric Swalwell (CA-15): 3
Tony Cardenas (CA-29): 3
Representative of CA-15
Cedric Richmond (LA-02): 3
Representative of LA-02
Al Green (TX-09): 3
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09): 3
Dina Titus (NV-01): 3
Bill Enyart (IL-12): 3
Julia Brownley (CA-26): 3
Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA-35): 3
Steven Horsford (NV-04): 3
Ron Barber (AZ-02): 3
Raul Ruiz (CA-36): 3
Derek Kilmer (WA-06): 3
Finally, 20 Democrats (score = 2) should be more progressive but can easily turn things around and better represent their constituents:
Carolyn McCarthy (NY-04)
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Joaquin Castro (TX-20)
G. K. Butterfield (NC-01)
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Gregory Meeks (NY-05)
Charlie Rangel (NY-13)
John Carney (DE-AL)
Robert Andrews (NJ-01)
Ed Perlmuter (CO-07)
Peter Visclosky (IN-01)
Eddie Johnson (TX-30)
Gerald Connolly (VA-11)
Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08)
Jerry McNerney (CA-09)
Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15)
Mike Doyle (PA-14)
Jim Moran (VA-08)
What are your thoughts on this list? Any names not on it that should be? Any names on it to which you object?