In the larger picture, the anti-incumbency movement merely serves as a distraction from more sensible approaches for reforming and revitalizing American democracy. It is just another of a seemingly endless array of ineffective and marginalized political reform movements. Until American patriots and dissidents unite behind something a lot more powerful, the two-party plutocracy will remain in power.
The core problem is that the public has been thoroughly brainwashed to believe in the two-party system. One major consequence is that they refuse to vote for third-party candidates; so that even when they see what is tragic about our politicians, they think the solution is voting for a challenger from the other major party. This happens despite the high fraction of voters registered as independents.
The anti-incumbency movement could only be successful if it were truly bipartisan, so that voters rejected not only ALL incumbent Democrats and Republicans, but also refused to elect new members to Congress from BOTH major parties. Merely shifting control of Congress from one of the major parties to the other has never worked effectively. Why? Simple; both major parties have been corrupted by the same corporate and other special interests that pervert public policies to serve them, rather than the general public.
The problem is that we still do not have effective political competition in a nation that prides itself on competition. The two-party duopoly and plutocracy has worked hard to block true political competition. When it comes to congressional elections, gerrymandering has been used as a potent weapon. The gerrymandering of districts by both major parties when they have the power to accomplish it has not only protected incumbents, it has also made it nearly impossible for third party congressional candidates who are on a huge number of ballots to be successful.
Nelson Lee Walker, of Tenure Corrupts, recently made these sage observations:
I'm coming around to the idea that the bulk of the American people are basically stupid, stupid, stupid! Why?
How else can we explain how Congress, which has a 9% approval rating, gets reelected about 95% of the time? Do we ever 'throw the bums out?' Listen to these stats: Senate: As of 2008, of 100 Senators, 39 (39%) reelected for 18 yrs or more, 4 over 40 years! House: As of 2008, of 435 members, 143 (33%) reelected for 14 yrs or more, 5 over 36 years! And the longer these guys are in office, the more more of them will run unopposed in future elections, since nobody will bother to challenge them. Unopposed races have doubled in the last 20 years, from 40 to 80 seats. And who is responsible for this sad state of affairs? YOU!!! Not your dumb neighbor. Not the media. Not the crooked political system. Just YOU, the typical stupid American! The guy who complains how those crooked politicians are ripping off the country and sending us all down the tubes, and then reelects them!In this of all years, these critical views are hard to dispute. After all, could it be any clearer that the anti-incumbency movement is a failure? I urge those who have put so much time and energy into the anti-incumbency movement to call it quits and devote themselves to strategies that may be more effective. One option is to work hard to form a new national third party. Another is to support the relatively new nonpartisan attempt by <A href="www.foavc.org">Friends of the Article V Convention</A> to compel Congress to give Americans what they have a constitutional right to have, which has been requested by the required number of states, and what the Founders believed we would need when the public lost trust and confidence in the Federal government: an Article V convention that could consider proposals for constitutional amendments, a number of which could truly reform the structure of our dysfunctional political system.
Article comments
1 - Baronius
Joel, I didn't expect a third party movement, but I thought there'd be some anti-incumbent sentiment. Instead, it's like the entire House of Representitives was rewarded for a bailout that everyone hates.
2 - Dave Nalle
Most of the incumbents who really needed to be voted out were Democrats and the failure of the Republican leadership and success of the Obama campaign worked against that happening. Plus off-year elections are a lot more realistic times to get people out of office.
But I have no explanation for why Ted Stevens won reelection.
Dave
3 - Matthew T. Sussman
But my Congresswoman isn't at fault!
4 - Dave Nalle
My congressman actually isn't at fault. He voted against the bailout twice.
Dave
5 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Two simple reasons:
1) problems of collective action.. if no one else is going to make a concerted effort to always take out the incumbent why should anyone waste their vote doing it?
2) our constitution is designed for a two party system. If voting out the incumbent means some guy who completely misrepresents me is elected I'm going to vote for the incumbent who at least represent me somewhat.
I have a friend from Indiana who recently faced the dilemma of voting for Obama or a more liberal 3rd party candidate. Even though the more liberal 3rd party candidate represented his views more, he voted for Obama in part because I convinced him it was the practical thing to do. A movement for a third party, or to vote out all incumbents, is bound to fail unless it can guarantee its participants some tangible possibility of that there man will be elected.
6 - Dave Nalle
PETI, your last point is why these third party movements which always start out by nominating someone for president and not doing much else never work.
For a third party to be successful it needs to come from the grassroots and elect people to local office and build from there into a national movement.
Dave
7 - Dr Dreadful
Matt as usual puts his finger right on the quandary.
As I've said before, there are two important things to remember about the public's perception of Congress:
1. Ask a random person to assess the performance of Congress, and they will likely give them a low approval rating. But dig deeper, and they will very probably not be able to tell you why.
2. Although Mr/Ms Average disapproves of the performance of Congress as a whole, (s)he is far more likely to tell you that their congressperson is a good guy/gal.
8 - Baronius
I read somewhere that Ted Stevens has been an Alaskan senator for all but 9 years that Alaska has been a state. I don't care what party you are; there's something wrong with that.