Those of us who live in one of the ‘Super Tuesday’ states and are eligible to vote in the primary will probably spend at least a little time this weekend trying to figure out how we’re going to vote. One place that might be useful to check out is ProgressivePunch, which has searchable rankings of how our representatives have voted. Of particular interest (given the candidates for prez) is their Senate rankings, which you can order by the current year’s votes, lifetime, and “chips are down” votes, which they described as

…votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result).

Absences by members of Congress are penalized in scoring only if the margin was <10 votes in the Senate or <20 votes in the House.

You can also drill down to look at votes on single issues, and they describe their methodology for how they do their rankings, so you can look for ways to dismiss the results when they don’t turn out the way you wanted them to.

For the current Congress, Barack Obama is ranked #43 in the Senate – slightly ahead of Joe Lieberman. Chuck Schumer, somewhat surprisingly, comes in at #5 – well ahead of ‘liberal lion’ Ted Kennedy who, at #28, is just ahead of #29, Hillary Clinton.

Teddy’s lifetime score is much better, of course, as he comes in at #7. Hillary’s tied with Pat Leahy at #17, and Obama is close by at #24.

When the chips are down, Schumer also comes in at #5, Clinton is all the way down to #30, and Obama, at #43, is two spots ahead of his Senate mentor, Joe Lieberman.

There are tons of ways to drill down on all the issues, and it’s pretty interesting (and a good Friday time-killer at work). Unfortunately, it hasn’t made me feel any better about the two choices I seem to have left in Tuesday’s primary. But they’re both a hell of a lot better than John McCain, who comes in at #84 for this Congress – and #59 lifetime.

Now, let’s get this crappy week over already.