legislation where majorities from both parties voted the same, but which were not in alignment with progressive principles?

That is, were there pieces of legislation that progressives would want to see passed, but where a majority of Democrats sided with the majority of Republicans?

Votes such as this would call for a left-wing third party. The question is, where there any such votes, and if so, how many and of what signficance?

(Yes, yes I should probably go dig up the answer myself -- just thought I'd throw it out there.)

In some districts, and some states, I can recognize the value of having moderate and conservative Democratic representatives. For example, anyone more liberal than Ben Nelson would probably have trouble holding their seat in Nebraska, and he does more accurately represent the views of his constituents.

On the other hand, it does us very little good to have conservatives in places where a liberal can get elected. I might actually be getting to the point of believing that it might be better if Santorum wins in PA. Casey hasn't given us a reason to believe that he would have a significantly different voting record (except on minimum wage, wooooo doggie).

In a state which clearly disagrees with and dislikes Rick Santorum, I have a hard time understanding how it can possibly make sense to run a conservative. If you're pro-choice or dislike the Iraq war, why should you get out and vote?

If Rahm Emmanuel and his ilk have their way, we'll we'll be stuck with two anti-choice, pro-war parties.

A very handy list.

Unfortunately, you've mostly used temporary THOMAS links which have now expired!

The clerk.house.gov links to the actual roll calls are really what you wanted (and what you've given for some of the RCs). They're durable.

Perhaps one of your interns could fix the URLs. (Kidding.)

Great idea for analysis, comparing the majority wills from both parties in contrast to stake out what it really means to be a democrat versus republican in the mainstream of both parties, not the centre fringes and overlap.

I, for one, was surprised to learn that a majority of congressional democrats voted against the Iraq war.  yes, the Senate was controlled by the Democrats at the time, but it only took a small number of Democratic senators voting for it, along with the republicans, to pass it.

As I recall, even then a majority of senate Dems voted no.

In the house it was an overwhelming no from House Dems.  

Yet Democrats are held equally to account for the Iraq debacle in some eyes.  I think this is because so many of the most prominent dems did vote for it, so they have a hard time declaiming it now (I doubt Republicans in their position would feel so constrained, they have no qualms about hypocrisy - which is heartening in a way, that democrats generally do stive to avoid hypocrisy, even at political cost).

The Patriot Act is the only major vote I can think of where large majorities of democrats (esp in the Senate) voted for it.

As for any of these things being cause for a third party I say this:

Third parties have the luxury of being totally virtuous because they have no power.  Put any third party into office, and they will behave much like the democrats (in the long run).  The pressures of politics and getting reelected, of bribery, of phoney-progressives voting against the common good will affect them too.  If the Green party ran congress when Joe Lieberman decided to get into politics, don't you think he would have joined them?  The party in power will always attract those that merely want power and will mouth the right words in order to get it.

Unless someone can design a third party has built in mechanisms to immunize their politicians from such pressures systemically (and that such means do not cause even more serious problems), I would be very skeptical of the high hopes anyone has for a third party (putting aside the practical problems of forming a viable third party without merely splitting the existing progressive vote and giving the republicans a permanent majority...).

While I'm here...

Is this a CQ list or something? Surely you didn't go through all the RCVs by hand?

Or did you slap the RC details on a spreadsheet?

Just curious for personal reasons...

I'm a sucker for this stuff, so I've taken a squint at one or two of these RCs.

Working backwards, the second vote (#661 on passage of HR 4437) gives a score of 239-182, R:203-17, D:36-4.

Even with my rudimentary mental arithmetic, that means that, discounting catch and release, the bill would not have passed without Dem votes!

If you flip the renegade Dems, you get a score of 203-218, a margin of loss of 15 votes.

To me. that's the test of Dem discipline. Basically, the Dems are furniture in the House until at least (depending on no votes) 15 or so GOP decide to vote against their party.

Then the Dems are in business. They can force a GOP defeat. (Subject to GOP catch and release.)

A significant cohort of House Dems seem to work not so much on catch and release, more like GOP come to poppa.

Moving along to #635 (on passage of HR 2830), we get 224-132, R:224-1, D:70-130.

In this case, no chance of the Dems defeating the bill.

But - 35% of Dems voting supporting the GOP?

Two ways of looking at it: Pelosi authorized a 'conscience' vote, given that her count showed their was no possibility of killing the bill. (It's a better line than that nonsense about the Slaughter report and the Murtha Iraq plan, at least!)

Or else she requested party unity and got a Bronx cheer in reply from a third of her troops.

Either way, it's not what I would conceive of as a party-line vote for the Dems.

if we have a majority, we control what things come up for votes.  therefore, if we control what is coming up for votes, we are more likely to bring up things that split the REPUBLICANS and keep dems united, things that dont get through on a republican watch. For instance, if democrats are running on idea X, that will only get voted on if we win. So if we win, we will have a 100 % positive vote.  However, the moderates in the middle are also willing to vote for idea Y, that republicans have.  I bet you, that suddenly if we took power, a lot of unity scores from red state republicans would go way up because they suddenly will be voting on things that they can support, and there wont be republicans putting wedge issues in there that they will have to vote for because that is what is coming up for a vote.

Working up the list - so far, we've only had two what I'd call solid party votes, 670 and 628.

Vote #627 (on agreement to the conference report on HR 3199) gives the same pattern as #661: 251-174, R:207-18, D:44-155.

That is, flip the renegade Dems, the vote fails 207-218.

Factor this in: if GOP managers could have been sure of 44 Dem votes for, they could have let 56 GOP vote against and still won the vote!

(Which would have turned out 213-212, R:169-56, D:44-155; Bernie Sanders, of course, is always on the side of the angels (or the Dems, at least!). Isn't he?)

1) Not one piece of progressive legislation up there for Democrats to show really which side they're one.

2) A few real important bills (Cafta, Patriot Act) wouldn't have gotten out of the House without Democratic support.

On balance, the Dems are clearly better than the GOP, but this is a Balance Sheet which leaves out many account analyses.

Is true indeed what you say.

But it doesn't start turning our way until we take the message to the Red States and message it simply, no frills, no arrogance, with a values message. And there are Democrats capable of doing that. Wellstone comes to mind - asn't just lefties who voted for him.

Hackett sounded like just such a candidate was well.

Which is why the Dem leadership turned on him. All about control. They don't give a damn about moving the needle, this is all about control.

And guess what, the needle won't move. It's only been moving in one direction for thirty years, and it's rightward.

What the Dems don't get is that THAT is their number one failure. You don't just pull progressive majorities out of your ass. You have to say what you're going to do, actually believe in it, have equity and justice as the underlying principle, and you have to deliver.

Else you're just facilitating the rightward drift, the DLC and "New Democrat" legacy.

Why?

Because there are Blue Dog Democrats who could either be lured to switch parties or to vote for a Republican as Speaker.  I can think of 3-4 off the bat, the usual Southern faction of the party.  There is Henry Cuellar of Texas, Bud Cramer of Alabama,  Jim Marshall OF Georgia, Gene Taylor of Miss. and Collin Petersen of Minn.  

Link here. They are amongst the most conservative Dems in the House. The National Journal's yearly rankings.  

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/h ouse/cons.htm?o1=con_composite&o2=de sc#vr

The Repubs promise them really great committee assignments, even chairmanships and lots of pork.  We need at least 20 or more seats to make sure that the vote for Speaker means it's Nancy Pelosi and not Hastert.

The Republicans should have gained control of the California Assembly in 1994, but Willie Brown induced one liberal Republican after another to defect, allowing him to keep control for most of the session.  Something like that could happen if the Democrats win the House by one or two districts.  From what I know of Cuellar, he is very likely to switch if the election for Speaker came down to one or two votes.  Now the closest thing there is to a Republican version of Willie Brown just resigned, but the point is that the Democrats really need more than fifteen seats.

Historically, liberals (or "progressives" only controlled the House during the New Deal era, and after the 1964 election.  It isn't a coincidence that so many major pieces of progressive legislation passed in that time.  At all other times, the Democrats organized the House with the help of "yellow dog" Southern Democrats, who were more conservative on most issues than most Republicans.

There are only a handful of genuine yellow dogs left, but there are about two dozen Democratic Congressmen who represent districts that Bush won by a considerable margin, and who have to deviate from the leadership fairly often.  In the end, its not just about winning districts, you have to change the attitudes of the voters.

This is a handy list I've saved for reference.  Tx.

A bill that distinguishes not only Dems. from Repubs, but also the Democrats who vote like Dems -- and those who vote for the rich..

HR 4167 -- Uniformity in Food Act.  

It outlaws state food safety notifications. So, state's can't put their own labels on foods.  So all the behemoth food companies need to do is lobby the federal government for lax labels -- they no longer have to work on the state level.  States are prohibited from communicating with consumers.  Don't that just beat all.

"No State or political subdivision of a State may, directly or indirectly, establish or continue in effect under any authority any notification requirement for a food that provides for a warning concerning the safety of the food, or any component or package of the food, unless such a notification requirement has been prescribed under the authority of this Act and the State or political subdivision notification requirement is identical to the notification requirement prescribed under the authority of this Act."

Look it up in Thomas (thomas.loc.gov).  It's outrageous.