you're not going to believe it's this stupid, but it is: in many cases, people vote for nominees so they don't appear as liberal on their DW-NOMINATE scores they think it helps them appear Reasonable and Not Extreme I wish I was making that up - ThreadSky

rincewind.run • 2 days ago

you're not going to believe it's this stupid, but it is: in many cases, people vote for nominees so they don't appear as liberal on their DW-NOMINATE scores

they think it helps them appear Reasonable and Not Extreme

I wish I was making that up

Reposted from Jacquie

I’m desperate for a follow up asking these guys WHY they voted for 99% of these noms in the first place. Like what was the strategy, what was the purpose?

Comments

palmiermatt.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yup. I constantly have to remind people how many Dems voted for Rubio. (Spoiler: all of them.)

ecurve.bsky.social•2 days ago

Something something metric used as a target ceases to be a metric.

upine.bsky.social•2 days ago

And why don't they want to appear liberal? Bc their incompetent consultants tell them that's bad & that they should be GOP Lite instead.

https://upine.medium.com/democratic-politicians-get-terrible-advice-5a69081fed90

springtick.bsky.social•2 days ago

You gotta be fucking kidding me

michaelpg.bsky.social•2 days ago

Us news rankings but for senators...we're so cooked

merz.bsky.social•2 days ago

If true, amazing and horrible… though believable:

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

Then it's a collective action prob. Someone is going to be the most liberal, but if they all shifted their votes, it wouldn't actually change anything as far as their intraparty ratings/rankings. It would widen the gulf between Ds & Rs, but who cares?!

Just argue it shows how far right the GOP is!

chasmat.bsky.social•2 days ago

And whose job in a parliamentary system is it to wrangle collective action problems? well

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

1. The US doesn't have a parliamentary system
2. Every Senator & Representative has free will, agency, & their own priorities
3. The US has extraordinarily weak parties

chasmat.bsky.social•2 days ago

1. “A parliament” then. A system in which parliamentary procedure is followed.
2. Every person has free will. Does it follow that no one ever has a duty to work to overcome collective action problems.
3. Okay?

chasmat.bsky.social•2 days ago

I wasn’t even disagreeing with you, but now I’m wondering what you think Senate leadership’s job is if not to organize collective action by the caucus??? Setting the cafeteria menu?

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

Having weak parties makes it difficult to force compliance. In a strong party, falling out of line can mean being kicked out of the party, and, consequently, losing one's seat.

Schumer can't kick anyone out of the party, let alone out of Congress. His job is only as strong as their support of him.

crs1.bsky.social•2 days ago

Don’t forget the imaginary middle class couple he has in his head https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/19/imaginary-friends

nightpups.bsky.social•2 days ago

I'd call him the Neville Chamberlain of our times, but that would be insulting to the legacy of Neville Chamberlain.

abbot-x.bsky.social•1 day ago

For a while there was this stupid hope that if Dems voted for less awful Trump nominees, somehow Repubs would vote against more awful Trump nominees and they would not get confirmed. This never worked.

mattsparkington.bsky.social•2 days ago

It’s like that for both sides too Marc Molinaro tried that trick during campaign season to no avail.

cobwebmadeoflego.bsky.social•2 days ago

As a UK person I find this whole not wanting to oppose thing really strange. Like the concept of being the opposition party is anathema to them. Over here we have a whole-ass Shadow Cabinet who will stand up and critique whichever minister and say what they would do instead.

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

You have both a parliamentary system, and I think much stronger parties than the US, plus no-confidence votes. Pretty much everything is a conscience vote here. And you never have a divided government (we don't, currently, but frequently do).

cobwebmadeoflego.bsky.social•2 days ago

Oh for sure. I'm very much aware our systems are somewhat different. It's just incredibly frustrating watching the inaction of elected people who could speak up/oppose but choose not to. Of course the ones who actively collaborate by choosing to confirm nominees are even worse.

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think confirming his nominees is a mistake, but they're "free votes," bc they'll be confirmed even w/o a single Democratic vote.

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

Generally, that's smart, but his nominees are all so incompetent & malicious Dems should oppose all of them if for no other reason than being able to say they voted against them when they inevitably screw up.

cobwebmadeoflego.bsky.social•2 days ago

Exactly. Do they not think people are watching and keeping the receipts?

dreamingzen.bsky.social•2 days ago

And the majority of them have a crippling addiction to social media.

postingposter.bsky.social•2 days ago

Hey, quick question. What on Earth is a DW-NOMINATE score?

nerdonthesurf.bsky.social•2 days ago

I also wondered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method)

markshatraw.bsky.social•2 days ago

Some organization gives every nomination and bill some kind of score (on a liberal-to-conservative spectrum) and elected officials get a score based on how many liberal things they voted for versus how many conservative things they voted for. It only ever comes up when two Senators run for president

annakeesey.bsky.social•2 days ago

Omg

bioturbonick.net•2 days ago

Also in arguments about party ideology shifts.

giziti.bsky.social•2 days ago

It's purely data driven - basically if you do PCA (dimension reduction by projection) on voting behavior, almost all the variation is contained in the first component.

giziti.bsky.social•2 days ago

You could call it "liberalism". In the past, there was a second component that had some explanatory power, you could roughly call it "civil rights/racism".

giziti.bsky.social•1 day ago

(They do something slightly more complicated than PCA, but you can think of it like that as a reasonable first approximation)

kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social•2 days ago

Imagine living in Virginia and watching Spanberger win by 10 this November and still thinking that corrupt Mark Warner is the best you can do?

narciaspokepal.bsky.social•2 days ago

😑

joewv.bsky.social•2 days ago

People have a whole spectrum of beliefs even though they may agree on many core issues. Not saying this doesn’t happen but I doubt a statistically significant number of voters do this. Dismissing people based on thinking they just want to appear “centrist” is intellectually lazy.

jbkawika.bsky.social•2 days ago

Low info swing voters are notoriously keyed into DW-NOMINATE scores so I think this is smart.

vinchenzojackal.bsky.social•2 days ago

Wait... they vote for Republican candidates because they don't want to look like they are the opposing party to Republicans... they don't want to look like they are Democrats?...
Because somehow they think being a Democrat would look bad if they ran as a Democrat candidate in future election?
Fuck?!

adrianwashere.bsky.social•2 days ago

Depends on which state they're from. Harris was scored as one of the most liberal Senators, but there was also next to no chance a Republican could beat her in a Senate race in California.

But for someone in a toss-up state, that could be a liability.