You might not like Bernie Sanders, or you might even hate him

[ehrnst]

355. Actually, those numbers aren't as clear as you might think concerning legislative achievements.

And you neglected to differentiate between House and Senate, which have some different heights of bars for getting a bill adopted, which is what counts.

After all, how many times did the GOP introduce a bill to "repeal Obamacare" during Obama's administration? Would you call those bills "legislative acheivements?" I think not.

Simply copying and pasting from a blogger (with no attribution, btw) is no way to effectively research:

http://wafflesatnoon.com/bernie-sanders-bills-passed/

If one wants to understand how effective a legislator is, one needs more than a list of numbers with no context from the first google result returned from a search for "list of Sanders legislative accomplishments."

Getting a bill that one has sponsored *adopted* in the Senate is a more accurate measure of legislative achievement.

Co-sponsoring a bill is not a measure of actual legislative work. To say that his legislative "achievements" include "sponsored and co-sponsored x number of bills" like saying that they a director has "directed or gave good reviews to x number of movies," as a measure how experienced a director they are...as has been mentioned quite effectively in this thread.

A more general measure of effectiveness is the legislative effectiveness scores developed by political scientists Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman. Volden and Wiseman examine all the bills a House or Senate member introduces, how far each bill gets in the legislative process, and condense this information into an overall score.


This tool tells us Sanders’s legislative effectiveness score was below the House median in seven of the eight Congresses in which he served. (The last year for which the data has been collected was the 2015-2016 session.)

A Legislator's Legislative Effectiveness Score is denoted as being "Below Expectations" if the ratio of his/her Legislative Effectiveness Score to his/her Benchmark Score is lower than .50.

As Senator Sanders was below .5 as a Senator in 2015-16, 2011-12 and has scored much lower than VT Senator Leahy for the full time Sanders has been in the Senate.

http://www.thelawmakers.org/ - click on Vermont.

You can find his congressional scoring, and previous years in the Senate by clicking on the "Selected Congress" menu at top left.

According to the Washington Post who referenced the data in this tool, Sanders’ legislative effectiveness score was below the House median in seven of the eight Congresses in which he served.

(And no, linking to an article that was published in April 2016 is not rehashing the primary - it's giving a source for the stats on Sanders' congressional career.)