For some years many groups
and their websites have been advocating voting out congressional incumbents as
an effective means to reform government and make it work better. Two of the better ones are Vote Out
Incumbents Democracy and Tenure Corrupts.
Congress’ average seat retention
rate since 1855 is 95.4 percent.
There was a 3.6 percent decrease in seat retention in Congress from 99.2
percent in 2004 to 95.6 percent in 2006.
But this modest improvement was aimed mostly at Republican incumbents,
when what is really needed is a bipartisan approach.
Considering the totally awful
public approval of Congress you would think that 2008 would be an historic year
for voting out congressional incumbents, especially because it is so easy to
blame both Democrats and Republicans for the nation’s woes. Moreover, public interest in politics
and this year’s general election were higher than in a long time. And the Internet is awash with
passionate statements against incumbents of both parties. So, how have Americans just
behaved? How did congressional
incumbents do this year?
This year the retention rate was
typical at 95.6 percent overall (and unlikely to change significantly when some
unsettled races get resolved).
Likewise, though most incumbent Republicans were reelected, out of just
20 incumbent seats lost, only one was for a Democrat. Need proof of just how little political
competition there is? Consider
uncontested House seats that incumbents did not even have to defend, including
32 Democrats and 12 Republicans that did not face a two-party challenger.
As usual, no third-party
congressional candidate was elected, with just a few able to hit around 20
percent, mostly when there was only a Democrat to run against, while in the vast
majority of cases they stayed in low single digits. In the presidential vote category it
looks like just 1.6 million people voted for third-party candidates, compared to
1.2 million in 2004 – not much of an improvement.
In other words, we have once
again witnessed the pendulum-effect, where voters may feel strong
anti-incumbency sentiments but in only a few cases express them as voting in
candidates of the “other” party. So
power shifts, but the corrupt status quo two-party system remains.
While I have agreed with the
motivations of those leading the anti-incumbency movement I have concluded that
there is something so rotten about our political system that there will never be
a sufficiently large anti-incumbency vote to have any real impact. This year proves my point.
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 as 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 was 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 effective political competition in a nation that prides itself about
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. 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 that 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 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 Friends of the Article V
Convention at www.foavc.org to compel Congress to give Americans what
they have a constitutional right to have and what 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.
For too long Congress has refused
to obey the Constitution and we “dumb” Americans have let them get away with it,
in large part because both Democrats and Republicans have feared (and instilled
fear about) such a convention. The
same people that keep getting elected to Congress! How’s that for symmetrical infamy?
[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn
through www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]