I just watched David Sirota’s “Democrats’ Innocent Bystander Fable” video, and while I agree with its point, the screen near the end saying “Two weeks ago, roughly 80% of Democrats in Congress voted to help continue the Iraq War” is absolutely incorrect.
While that figure’s true for the Senate, the overall percentage of Democrats in the Senate and House who voted for the supplemental funding bill is 44%.
There are 232 Democrats in the House and 49 in the Senate. 86 Democratic Representatives and 39 Democratic Senators voted for the supplemental. That’s 125 “yea” votes out of 281 Democrats, and it’s nowhere near 80%. (It’s 44%.) While that’s still appallingly high, the figure of 80% in the video is wrong. Even if you gave equal weight to the House and Senate and averaged their percentages, with the vote in the House at 37% and the vote in the Senate at 80%. the figure would only be 59%.
UPDATE: In an email, David Sirota says that his figure refers to a procedural motion in the House that “made passing the blank check possible” which passed by 90%. I replied that given references on previous screens to a “bill” (i.e. the supplemental spending bill) that point was unclear, although I certainly agreed that the Democrats should have cut off funding. He said he should probably have put in roll call numbers. I agree that would have made the calculation of the 80% more transparent.