In Trump’s first term, grassroots Democrats focused their ire on the Republican president. But now, after President Joe Biden’s reluctance to step aside in 2024 at age 81 helped pave the way for Trump’s return to the White House, many see their party’s own veterans as part of the problem.
Part of the problem is that everything is seniority based. So even if some new upstart may better represent the will of their district, they won’t be able to accomplish anything when compared to the person who’s been in Congress for 30+ years.
AOC did it.
And Max Frost.
That is correct coupled with how everything is gamified and that it’s statistically more like for an incumbent to win. Game theory, while a valid field of study, has really fucked us over
Because Congress and Senate should have 2 term limits. These old cunts just look after themselves.
The term limit is the election. Or should be anyway.
Not in a corrupt system where politicians buy votes with more power they get as they get older in office. Some of these assholes die of old age in office and people still want to elect them.
Then you ha e a stupid voter problem
This is a myth lacking citations to proper research.
Campaign spending[1] has diminishing marginal returns: past making a voter aware of a candidate or an issue, it doesn’t do much. It’s not the decisive factor in a partisan, general election, where party affiliation & incumbency matter more. The relation between campaign finances & election outcomes is correlation rather than causation. Donors contribute to candidates likelier to win, and wealthy donors contribute large sums to improve their access to the winner.
In major elections where the voters already know the candidates pretty well, advertisement money is mostly wasted. An advertisement is unlikely to cause a voter to flip parties.
Money matters more in primary races & local elections full of unknown candidates lacking an incumbent. There, ads help raise awareness of candidates & issues voters hadn’t known about. Multiple candidates of the same party may run, so party affiliation isn’t decisive, and advertising matters more.
notice the research the article cites ↩︎
If buying votes were that easy wouldn’t you just need money?
Seems like your bog-standard millionaire could buy an office if that was the mechanism.
Sort of.
In 2020, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 89.1% of House candidates and 69.7% of Senate candidates that outspent their opponents won their elections. In 2016, 95.4% of top spending House candidates and 85.3% of top spending Senate candidates won.
In a true democracy, shouldn’t the people be able to elect someone to office as much as they want? How is reelecting an unworthy candidate not a failing of the voters? Ancient democracies didn’t have term limits.
I’d argue recall elections should be possible for every elected office.