Throwback Thursday: That Time "Fiscal Hero" Jim Himes Went on Fox News to Defend the Bush Tax

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Thursday May 29, 2014 · 12:56 PM PDT

2014/05/29 · 12:56

(Cross-posted from Primary Colors)

One of the worst groups operating in Washington today is Fix the Debt. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out repeatedly, Fix the Debt is a fraudulent organization which claims to care about debt and deficits for their own sake but, when pushed, turns out to only care about a specific kind of deficit reduction - the kind that leaves rich people's interests wholly intact, while dumping the entire burden on the poor and middle class.

And it's only inside that political house of mirrors that the list of "Fiscal Heroes" they released this week makes any sense at all.

PrimaryBlog

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Tuesday April 22, 2014 · 1:12 PM PDT

2014/04/22 · 13:12

We like that Allyson Schwartz isn't backing down from Obamacare just because of the rocky roll-out like some other Democrats are, but many of the national and local media outlets are weirdly silent on how much of an Obamacare frenemy Congresswoman Schwartz has been.

PrimaryBlog

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Thursday April 10, 2014 · 1:18 PM PDT

2014/04/10 · 13:18

The Internet loves it some Throwback Thursday, and Primary Colors is no different. So every Thursday we'll be digging through the recent past to reacquaint you with some of the stupid votes that have landed Democratic members of Congress on our Targeted Democrats list.

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Tuesday March 25, 2014 · 10:58 AM PDT

2014/03/25 · 10:58

[Crossed-posted from Primary Colors.]

Back in 2011 Matthew Yglesias observed that DW-Nominate scores showed Democratic women were more liberal than Democratic men, but then updated the post with a link to this 2009 paper from Brian Frederick showing that the effect went away when you controlled for a district's partisan profile.

We were curious if that had changed at all five years later, so we mapped male and female House Democrats' progressive voting scores compared to their districts' partisan profiles.

It's not a major difference, but just in case you needed any more reasons to elect more Democratic women to Congress -- however small -- here it is:

PrimaryBlog

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Monday March 17, 2014 · 10:58 AM PDT

2014/03/17 · 10:58

(Cross-posted from Primary Colors)

The second primary of the 2014 election season is set for tomorrow, Tuesday March 18th, and one of the most important federal races in the country this November is IL-13.

Illinois's 13th District is viewed as one of the most important swing districts in the nation. According to the Cook Political Report it's an Even district, so we're talking about one of the swingiest of the swing districts.

PrimaryBlog

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Monday March 17, 2014 · 10:30 AM PDT

2014/03/17 · 10:30

The Primary Colors algorithm was created primarily to identify low-value Democrats in safe districts for primary challenges — but it can show us other things as well.

When we assign each member of Congress an expected score, it’s based on their colleagues’ scores in districts with similar partisan profiles.

Obviously we’d expect Democratic politicians to vote more conservative the more conservative their district gets, and more liberal the more liberal their district gets. And by-and-large, they do.

But Republicans don’t really follow that trend, as you can see in red on the graph below:

PrimaryBlog

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Friday March 14, 2014 · 11:01 AM PDT

2014/03/14 · 11:01

The Primary Colors scoring system is useful for identifying which Democrats to challenge in a primary, but it’s also useful for holding members of Congress accountable in seats too risky to support a left primary challenge. Read More

Karl Rove, Get Out of Our Brains!

PrimaryBlog

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Friday March 14, 2014 · 5:53 AM PDT

2014/03/14 · 05:53

Chris Cillizza makes an important point about Primary Colors in his write-up that I want to amplify and elaborate on:

It's hard not to see the Primary Colors effort as a reaction -- and a smart one -- to what has happened within Republican primaries, particularly in Senate races, over the past two elections. In Delaware, Colorado and Nevada in 2010 and then in Indiana and Missouri in 2012, more conservative candidates won primaries only to lose very winnable general elections against Democrats. In response, a number of establishment GOP types -- including Karl Rove -- formed the Conservative Victory Project in 2013, a super PAC aimed at ensuring the most electable candidates won primaries. The group has not, however, been very active -- raising just $16,000 in the entirety of 2013.
It's very much an open question whether Primary Colors will exert any impact on the Democratic House landscape. (The project is, at the moment, self-funded by Geeting and O'Donnell.) But, for ambitious Democratic candidates looking for a way into Congress or upstart progressive groups trying to make a name by taking down a sitting incumbent, it's a must-bookmark.

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New Interactive Map Shows You the Worst Democrats in Congress

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Monday March 10, 2014 · 8:15 AM PDT

2014/03/10 · 08:15

Every election season touches off a debate between more risk-averse Democratic Party operatives and campaign professionals and less risk-averse progressive activists over the wisdom of launching primary challenges to sitting members of Congress.

PrimaryBlog

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Monday August 05, 2013 · 12:03 PM PDT

2013/08/05 · 12:03

Last week, we launched the teaser version of our new website. In short, our intention is to 'bring a Moneyball approach to [primary challenges], and help progressive activists target their resources on the lowest-value members in the lowest-risk districts.'

One of the reasons we released a teaser instead of waiting to release our new website in full was because we were looking at this month as a type of beta test to see if our algorithm accurately captured who progressives thought deserved a primary in their own districts before the full-release of the site. Luckily, we had a great first week and heard from a lot of people. The response was overwhelmingly supportive, but we also had many smart people email us in our quest to further perfect our algorithm.

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Throwback Thursday: That Time "Fiscal Hero" Jim Himes Went on Fox News to Defend the Bush Tax

PA-Gov: Obamacare Frenemy Allyson Schwartz Running on Obamacare Now

Throwback Thursday: That Time Dan Maffei Voted for the GOP Shutdown

GRAPH: Democratic Congresswomen Are More Progressive Than Men

#IL13: Color Us Ann Callis Supporters

Proof the Republican Party Can't Be Moderate, in One Graph

How to Use Primary Colors to Hold Conservative Democrats Accountable

Karl Rove, Get Out of Our Brains!

New Interactive Map Shows You the Worst Democrats in Congress

Meet the 48 Democrats Too Conservative for Their Districts