I don’t know whether to quote this as an excellent example of sophistry or as an example of lying with numbers. In his retrospective on Nancy Pelosi’s career in office Matt Yglesias says:
When she became the #2 figure in the leadership hierarchy in 2002, she was the progressive voice in the councils of leadership. Prior to assuming that role, she was the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, which made her one of the most prominent congressional Democrats to buck the Bush administration on the invasion of Iraq.
By the numbers, most Democrats in Congress voted “no” on the war.
By the numbers the majority of Senate Democrats voted “aye” on the war. 29 of 50 Democratic senators voted to support the war. The final vote was 77 to 23. Only by combining House votes with Senate votes, a meaningless number, can Matt get to his numbers.
I opposed going to war against Iraq. It was clearly a sideshow, a distraction, in the War on Terror. And I did not find the weapons of mass destruction argument convincing.
In the context of writing about Pelosi, who served her career in the House and where she held several leadership positions including Speaker, seems like the House votes as a metric of overall support for the war would matter. He notes that Pelosi (correctly) opposed the war and seems likely her opinion was more influential in the House.
House of Representatives: The resolution passed 296 to 133.
81 Democrats (about 39%) voted in favor.
126 Democrats (about 60%) voted against.
Senate: The resolution passed 77 to 23.
29 Democrats (58%) voted in favor.
21 Democrats (42%) voted against.
As I recall, both the House and the Senate had to vote to support the war. Am I misremembering?
Steve
You’re changing the subject. The subject is did the majority of Senate Democrats vote in favor of the war? They did. Does it make sense to combine Senate votes with House votes? It does not. That the House Democrats voted 2:1 against didn’t make any difference.
MY could have written just what you did—that Nancy Pelosi’s career was in the House and a supermajority of House Democrats voted against the war. He did not. Instead he gave a nonsense figure.
We’ll never know what the the results would have been if the Democrats had controlled both the House and the Senate in 2002. They might have voted the Iraq War down. They might not. Note that being confident that a measure will pass regardless of your opposition is empowering. You can give a symbolic vote without being blamed for it.
I just reread it. He says Congress, not Senate or House of Representatives. Dictionary says…
“a national legislative body, especially that of the US. The US Congress, which meets at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was established by the Constitution of 1787 and is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives.”
You appear to be the one who wants to make the subject the Senate which in the context of Pelosi makes little sense to me.
Steve
Apples and oranges. Adding votes in the Senate to votes in the House is a meaningless statistic due to the differences between the two chambers of our national legislature.
And, yes, I have my own blog. I post what I want to post about on my blog just as MY does on his. That means I’m allowed to point out that adding votes in the Senate to votes in the House means nothing.
You are allowed to think whatever you care to but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. You can add parsecs to inches but that doesn’t mean that the resulting number means anything.