What's a "Most Valuable" Democrat?

What if I told you that some crazy blogger, using some fancy math, had figured out that the 10th Most Valuable Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives is ... Kentucky's own Despicable DINO Blue Dog Cowardly Worm Ben "Wire Hangar" Chandler?

Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. But what if then I told you that the "crazy blogger" referred to is none other than the God of the Political Numbers Nate "Nate Silver is Always Right" Silver? What would you say then, huh?

No, I'm not telling you what I'm on and no, you may not have any.

Seriously. Silver apparently cooked up some meth on that blog of his, fed it to his numbers et voila!

What makes a congressman valuable to his party? One fairly intuitive answer is that it's someone who votes with his party on key pieces of legislation more often than a typical congressman from his district would.

I have, therefore, compiled roll call votes on ten key pieces of legislation -- in my opinion, the ten most important pieces of legislation -- that came before the House of Representatives this year. These items are: the stimulus package, the FY 2010 budget, the health care bill, the Stupak Amendment to the health care bill, the jobs bill, the financial regulation package, the cap-and-trade bill, the Fair Pay Act, the Guantanamo detainee transfer vote, and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was attached to a defense appropriations bill. This is a little heavy on economic policy versus social policy or foreign policy, but that's how the House's agenda been this year. The Democrats won each of these votes in the House, except for the Stupak Amendment, although several of the policies have yet to pass the Senate.

What I then did was to run a logistic regression for each vote, comparing each representative's vote to his predicted vote based on his district's PVI. For example, a congressman in a district with a PVI of R+6 had a .37 likelihood (37% chance) of voting for the stimulus package. A congressman from such a district who voted for the stimulus package would be rated positively for his vote: specifically he'd receive a score of 1 less .37, or +.63. If the congressman voted against the stimulus package, on the other hand, he'd receive a score of -.37. I then added up each representative's score across all 10 votes.

This is pretty simple, really. Note that the method does not account directly for a congressman's party. This is deliberate. It's not proper, for instance, to compare Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, the moderate congresswoman from South Dakota, to a typical Democrat, or even a typical Democrat in a conservative district, because if she were to retire, we can't take for granted that a Democrat would replace her. In fact, in South Dakota, she would probably be replaced by a Republican. Is Herseth-Sandlin -- even though she breaks with her party somewhat frequently -- more valuable to the Democrats than a typical congressman from South Dakota would be? That's what we're trying to get at.

Abstentions and votes of present are not counted as either positives or negatives. I also threw out a handful of "liberal no" votes; this is a situation where a congressman opposes a policy from the left when most of the opposition comes from the right. The liberal nos I identified were: Kucinich and Kaptur on financial regulation, Kucinich and Massa on health care, Kucinich, Stark and DeFazio on cap-and-trade, Kucinich on budget, and six representatives (Kucinich, Stark, Jackson Jr., Conyers, Filner and Welch) who objected to the defense language in the hate crimes bill.

Here, then, are the 25 most valuable Democrats, relative to their districts:

Read the whole thing.

What we've got here is the classic Conscience vs. Constituents vs. Party battle. As an elected official facing a controversial vote, do you do what your conscience tells you to do, what your constituents want you to do or what your political party leaders tell you to do?

We'll leave aside for the moment that no House member really knows what his constituents want, unless he has personally spoken to all 800,000 of them and asked.

You think you know what they want, but what if what you think they want is really, really stupid and you know for a fact that what they say they want would end up hurting them very, very badly? Like privatizing Social Security?

Or what if your constituents actually want the same thing that the facts and your conscience tell you is the right thing to do, but your party leaders demand you defy both of the them, or else lose all party support in the next election?

What if your constituents, your conscience and your party leaders all agree, but your biggest campaign contributors, the ones without whom you cannot win re-election, and the ones to whom you have made sincere promises, tell you to vote the other way?

All due respect to Nate Silver, this is more complicated than the numbers he uses to define the political leanings of single congressional districts or to characterize votes.

I realize Silver, who really is almost always right, is discussing just value to party here, and he did make allowance for votes of conscience like those of the liberals who voted against health care reform because it wasn't strong enough.

But I don't find "value" in any elected official who fails to provide leadership in terms of educating his constituents on good policy, good politics or his own conscience.

So tell us, Ben, which won out on the Stupak and health care reform votes? Was it your conscience, your constituents or your party that made you vote to restore Back Alley Abortions, then to deny affordable health insurance to thousands of Kentucky families?

Because both of those votes blatantly defied your party leaders and the Democratic Party Platform to which you gave allegience by running on the Democratic ticket.

And both of those votes obviously hurt your constituents, in physically painful, dangerous and lethal ways.

So what warped, psychotic excuse for a conscience told you to cast those votes?

Because the only other explanation is that somebody Bought. You. Off.

Explain those votes honestly, then we'll talk about how fucking valuable you are.

h/t Down with Tyranny.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....