Progressives More Coherent Than Democrats

The analysis in this article astounds me, and gives me some hope. Its essential message is this: In terms of how they cosponsor bills in the Senate, separating Senators into Democrats and non-Democrats doesn’t make much sense. Separating Senators into progressives and non-progressives, as defined by the Progressive Patriots legislative scorecard, does.

The hope I get from this article is that, although the Democratic Party disappoints us, there exists a progressive bloc within the Democratic Party in the Senate that really is working hard to create positive change in the U.S. government.

Let’s look beyond the label of political party to the issues that really matter to us.

clipped from www.zimbio.com A 21.6% explanation isn’t awful when trying to predict the thoroughly chaotic behavior of people in groups, but we can do better. I’ve looked at ratings of Senators on an progressive political index at Progressive Patriots, and the correlation between Senators’ progressive action score and Senators’ level of bill activity is higher (+0.69). Just by itself, Senators’ progressivism accounts for 48.0% of the variation in bill activity. The bottom line is that if you’re wanting to understand why some members of the U.S. Senate are more active in bill sponsorship and promotion than other members, ditch party as an explanation. A much better explanation of that variation is the progressivism that a Senator maintains in his or her legislative conduct.