

Gaffe-maker? Or truth-teller? (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It's no secret that vulnerable Democrats are trying to put some distance between themselves and President Obama this campaign season. Republicans have been diligently working to tie Democratic lawmakers to the policies of a president whose approval ratings are hovering in the low 40s.

Obama himself may have added some fuel to this fire when he stated, in a Monday interview, "the bottom line is, though, these are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress."

But just how much have these vulnerable Democrats toed the Obama line while in Congress? Fortunately, we've got data for that. Congressional Quarterly compiles a "presidential support" metric, which tracks how often members of Congress cast a vote in agreement with a president's stated position.

First, a word of context: the parties overall are very unified at this time in history. Voting with your party is the rule and not the exception, as this data from the House shows. In the 112th Congress, roughly 80 percent of House members voted with their party 90 percent of the time or more.

I grabbed the presidential support scores for seven Democrats in the midst of close races that likely will determine who has control of the Senate next year.

The numbers show that these candidates vote with the president, on average, 92 percent of the time. Iowa representative Bruce Braley "only" voted with Obama 69 percent of the time, making him one of the least enthusiastic Obama supporters among House or Senate Democrats. The other six senators all voted with the president more than 90 percent of the time.

So when Obama says that "these are all folks who vote with me," he's stating a simple and obvious truth. That a statement of fact can be largely interpreted as a gaffe, and used as fodder for negative campaign ads, illustrates the low status of frank speech in our current political discourse.

In this case, it's also a sign of how successful Republicans have been at convincing Democrats to distance themselves from previous votes and policy positions.