Are Blue Dog Democrats getting a bad rap?

The Blue Dog Democratic Coalition is one of the favorite punching bags of the progressive blogosphere. From DailyKos to OpenLeft, the Blue Dogs -- a group of 51 "moderate and conservative" House Democrats -- are routinely held up as a symbol of all that's wrong with the Democratic Party.

A piece yesterday in Firedoglake is typical of the anti-Blue Dog genre, in which they are savaged for being hypocritcal about government spending, opposed to hate crime laws and being the descendants of racist Dixiecrats (although the majority of Blue Dogs aren't in the South).

Defenders of the Blue Dogs respond by saying that these Democrats come from "hard districts," and they can't take progressive stands because they'll get voted out of office by their conservative constituents.

Put aside for the moment the unpleasant implication that Blue Dog votes are devoid of moral conviction and based purely on political calculation. Even on its own terms, is the idea that Blue Dogs come from uniquely conservative "hard districts" even true?

An analysis by the Swing State Project this week might give the Blue Dogs some backup.

In a widely-circulated post, blogger Crisitunity ranked members of the 110th Congress by their votes compared to their districts' Partisan Voting Index, a measure first developed by political analyst Charlie Cook in 1997. The idea is to find out if a Representative's voting record in 2008 was more or less "Democratic" than his district.

"Under-performing" Democrats are those that consistently vote more conservative than they could likely get away with given their district's Democratic leanings. "Over-performing" Democrats are those that somehow manage to vote more Democratic-friendly than their constituency.

So how do the Blue Dogs stack up? According to the Swing State Project's analysis:

* Only three of the top 20 "under-performing" Democrats in 2008 were in the Blue Dog Coalition: Reps. Scott (GA-13), Harman (CA-36) and Cooper (TN-5).

* By contrast, six of the Blue Dogs were among the 20 most "over-performing" Democrats: Reps. Taylor (MS-4), Matheson (UT-2), Pomeroy (ND-AL), Lampson (TX-22), Herseth (SD-AL) and Chandler (KY-6).

An analysis of Cook's own PVI rankings for Congressional districts shuffles some of the names but arrives at the same conclusion: there are more Blue Dogs topping the list of Democratic "over-performers" than "under-performers."

What does it all mean?

One take is that, in key cases, the Blue Dogs are right about the makeup of their districts and the amount of political room they have to maneuver.

Furthermore, Blue Dogs are hardly unique -- in fact, most of the top Democrats who are voting more conservative than their constituents aren't Blue Dogs.

But then there are those representatives who cement the case that Blue Dogs can be out of touch with their districts. Exhibit A is Rep. David Scott whose conservative, business-friendly votes are a mismatch for his diverse and strongly Democratic district in the Atlanta suburbs. Rep. Jane Harman is clearly another.

An important note: The PVI is a limited tool. It measures the political lean of a district by presidential votes -- useful shorthand, but one that ignores complicated questions like the way a presidential election played out in a particular district.

And it clearly doesn't capture the breadth of political views among constituents -- for example, what about Southern populists who may vacillate on social issues but be progressive on economic ones?

The Blue Dogs also have to answer another question: Many Democrats, either due to conviction or opportunism, vote more conservative than their districts. But why have Blue Dogs taken the extra step of organizing/joining a political bloc that often defines itself by its opposition to the broader Democratic agenda -- as with the stimulus bill and Obama's budget?

In other words, the question for Democrats isn't necessarily whether the Blue Dogs are too conservative, but why they've organized in a way that frequently undermines the Democratic brand.