You have now noticed that on a tentpole Democratic issue, one that framed the 2008 campaign, doing something as simple as a public option (not even universal healthcare, just a public option) causes that 95% voting record to drop to nothing.
Right, stop there for a minute: the public option was not included in the bill.
Support didn't "drop to nothing"; it was judged (rightly or wrongly) that support couldn't be maintained
at levels high enough to pass, which would be about 80%+ of Democratic congressmen IIRC.
This is what will happen with the party in general. They'll play musical chairs on who is to blame at any specific cause so they individually look like they support progressive agendas, but when the rubber meets the road and they have the power to do so, they won't. And there is no algorithm to say who's good and who's bad among them, they're gaming the system as best they can. You really do just have to look hard at an individual candidate and determine whether they're really aligned with a voter's interests or if they're just playing at it and will drop their spine in congress.
So again, your interpretation of events is wrong. It is actually demonstrably false. There is a not-insignificant element of the Democrat party that aligns with Republicans more than Democrat voters, and judging from how they spend their money and run their own events, it's the people in charge of the party.
Right, I don't think you're actually paying attention to what I've been writing, because I don't disagree with most of this.
There
is a not-insignificant element of the Democratic Party that aligns with Republicans more than Democrat-voters. And whilst I think the leadership of the Democratic Party is more concerned with risk-aversion and strategic concerns than almost
anything to do with policy or ideology, I would at least agree that centre-right politics hold disproportionate sway in the leadership and that it's not representative of their voterbase.
None of this is what I've been arguing against.
What I have been saying is that support for something like a public option among Democratic congressmen would need to be pretty high in order to pass through congress
even if the Democrats had a majority in both houses. This is precisely what happened with the public option and the ACA. Anything lower than about 80% of Democratic congressmen supporting it, and it would fall through. Hence, what the leadership would include in the bill was limited by what they judged would be accepted by
all their congressmen (or close enough).
In this instance, those 20%-or-so are the "not-insignificant element that aligned itself with Republicans more than Democrat-voters", like Joe Lieberman. But he caususes with Democrats because he still has more in common with them than the Republicans on other issues, and in order to continue to be a broad tend the Democratic Party has no choice but to encompass people like him.
And the 80%-or-so who
would have voted for the public option are representing the Democratic voters more than they're representing the Republicans. The fact that some of them occasionally vote against the party on unrelated issues is not evidence that they're secretly conspiring, but simply that people believe different stuff on different issues.
Me the fifth time this conversation happens [...]
Eh, a spreadsheet would be nice, but I don't need that much. Just evidence of conspiracy beyond sharing a job title would be enough.