One frequently heard refrain around the liberal blogosphere is “[fill in the blank with name of Democratic congressperson who voted the wrong way on the important legislation of the day] is a bad Democrat; let’s primary him!”
Well, how do you know who really is a good or bad Democrat? David Jarman at Daily Kos took the time to quantify who is a good or bad based upon a combination of the Partisan Voting Index and some congressional ranking services (in this case, Progressive Punch, the National Journal, and DW/Nominate, that determine who is the most liberal or conservative members of Congress based on their votes.
[These rankings] do provide a helpful tool; by combining them with information about how their state or district has voted in recent years, we can analyze whether a congressperson is performing in line with how you’d expect him or her to, given their constituents. In other words, how “valuable” are they, or how good a “fit” are they, given the kind of district they have to work with? [..]
“Most congresspersons, in fact, do perform about how you’d expect, but it’s the ones who don’t who are the interesting ones and deserving more of our attention. We can use this method to spot Democrats who are underperforming their districts and might benefit from a primary challenge to straighten up or get out; we can also use it as a means of finding below-the-radar Democrats who are voting more liberally than their districts would warrant, and giving them some encouragement. It can also help us spot potentially vulnerable Republicans, the wingnuts hidden in swing districts whose records provide ample ammunition for a general election attack.”
So what did Jarman find?
Let’s use the example of Carper, who’s the most underperforming Democrat according to DW/Nominate scores. He’s in Delaware, which has a PVI of D+7.0, making it the 10th most liberal state. [..] Carper has a DW/Nominate score of -0.189, which makes him the 50th most liberal senator (meaning the only Democrats trailing him are Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson, each of whom has a much tougher state to work with). Find the difference between the PVI ranking (19.5) and the Vote ranking (50), and, voila, you come up with a PVI/Vote Index score of -30.5.
That means that Carper is not representing his constituents with his votes. He is voting as if he represented a more conservative state like Missouri or West Virginia or Nebraska. Delaware is a liberal state now, and most definitely a deep blue Democratic one, much to the chagrin of those Delaware Way-ers who like to say it is a moderate or a fiscal conservative state. Therefore, what these numbers reflect is that Tom Carper is stuck in the past, representing the state as it was thirty years ago. But times have changed, and what this study is saying is that Tom Carper is vulnerable to a good primary challenge.
The only problem is, of course, there is no Democrat willing to take him on. And I assume that will remain true up to and past the filing deadline on July 10. Carper will then handidly defeat Kevin Wade in the fall and we will be stuck with him for another six years. A square Democrat trying to fit in a round state.