A Revealing Graphic:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/obamas-share-determined-dems-votes-on.html

"This reflects the breakdown in the roll call based on the percentage of the vote that Barack Obama received in each congressional district in 2008. Members who are retiring from politics are excluded; those who are vacating their seats to run for statewide office are listed by the percentage of the vote that Obama received throughout the state, rather than their home district. Those technicalities aside, the trend is pretty clear. All 12 Democrats running in a place where Obama received less than 40 percent of the vote decided against the bill, whereas 195 of 202 running where he received a majority voted for it (including 64 of 64 in places where Obama had at least 70 percent of the vote). The swing votes tended to come from those districts in which Obama received less than 50, but greater than 40 percent of the vote two Novmebers ago. (Although it makes only the slightest bit of difference, the Obama vote share alone was a better predictor than PVI, which accounts for the results of the last two elections.)"

[berni_mccoy]

1. There are 17 very brave Dems.

[tekisui]

2. I always appreciate Nate Silver's data analysis.

He is the best in politics.

[Richardo]

3. So: Of those 32 'blue dogs', how many could be replaced by 'progressives'?

I see seven seats that could realistically represent opportunities to unseat ConservaDems.



That's 7 of the 237 on this chart. The 25 Blue Dogs in districts that went for McCain/Palin (the beige part of the top two bars) are NOT going to be replaced by more liberal Democrats. They'd be replaced by Republicans.

[Salviati]

5. Forget progressives, how many can be replaced with actual democrats...

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the bill passed, and believe that it brings a lot of good changes to the health insurance sector, but it cannot by any stretch of the imagination can be called a progressive bill. In a normal, sane world, every Democrat should have been on board with this bill, or attacking it from the left, and there should have been a sizable number of moderate republicans voting for it as well. I feel that we should replace any and every "democrat" who voted against this bill with someone who would have had the courage to stand up against the insanity of the modern day teabagging republican party. But don't belive that we can replace them all with progressives (though it would be great...)

[Richardo]

6. Same answer.

You make a good point, but if it were possible to have anyone more mainstream 'Democratic' - party platform-wise - in that seat, that person would be there already. We're lucky most of those seats are Democratic, even in name only.

[Change Happens]

4. I love blue America.........nt