Okay. So what we have is a system where everyone has the freedom to run against a political dynasty for whom the system is rigged. The common citizen has the same right to a billion dollar super PAC and a high powered campaign staff that the career politician does… eh maybe not the access but this country was built on glossing over inequality of opportunity so let’s not let that stop us now.
Oh, you’re one of those.
How did voting for Hillary work out for ya? Did the whole country fall in line behind the only qualified candidate in history just like you expected them to?
Did anyone here use that absurd strawman before you did?
A party is always going to make such decisions. The question is, does the decision further paternalism (e.g. the idea that this dynasty knows best because of genetics and family tradition) or do they push back against it (e.g. by supporting a talented outsider).
Political dynasties don’t actually run in elections, you know – their members do. And parties can choose other criteria for who runs beyond membership in a dynasty.
My argument is what it is: I said nothing there about the voters voting in another member of the Clay family, I was talking about the Missouri Dems (i.e. the party) putting one up as the favoured nominee.
Weird how winning some elections gets people to think you can win more of them and give you money.
As you probably recall, there wasn’t a “Clinton dynasty” before Bill Clinton became president. There also wasn’t an “Obama dynasty” before Obama became president–running against the “Clinton dynasty.”
Really?
As a matter of fact: yes, as much as any leader of one of the two political parties can be expected to. Hillary Clinton got the third most votes of any presidential candidate in history, behind Barack Obama (2008) and (barely) Barack Obama (2012). If not for accidents of geography PLUS the coordination of her blatantly, openly corrupt opposition with a concerted foreign influence campaign, she’d be president. So snark away.
Clay ran in a contested, six-person primary during his first election. He got 60% of the vote. The second place finisher got 27%. Your argument is that the person 60% of the voters chose shouldn’t have been given any support by the party.
Yeah, but there was nearly forty years of Bill Clinton in politics and at least fifteen (thirty, according to her supporters) of Hillary before the 2016 campaign. Career politicians plus a dynasty. But maybe they aren’t a dynasty if you compare them to the Tafts or some other ridiculous 100 year dynasty.
It’s funny how quickly you can get “the Clinton dynasty isn’t a dynasty” out of any Hillary stan.
You can’t just handwave away a broken-by-design institution meant to empower the establishments that serve dynasties (and vice-versa) by refering to the Electoral College as an “accident of geography”. Clinton – as often happens with members of leadership dynasties – got complacent and smug and didn’t bother to campaign in two states with a significant number of Electoral votes. Whoopsie! That she won the popular vote only highlights the monumental nature of her screw-up.
No, my argument is that the party shouldn’t have been in the tank for someone just based on his family name and who his dad was. The popular vote – which is often influenced by party favouritism – is a matter I haven’t discussed. But please, try to put words in my mouth again.
THIS!!! I don’t care what my legislators look like, what their name is, or even what their wealth level is - if they represent their all their constituents, not just donors and lobbyists.
She didn’t even try to earn votes, just thought she was entitled to them. So people voted third party. Who saw that coming, except for fucking everyone?
All of this. Not him but his family. That’s what we’re talking about.
You really think it takes 20+ years to learn how to write a bill or think for oneself instead of listening to lobbyists? Sorry, but the implication that congresspeople not spending long enough in office is why we have lobbyists and ALEC writing bills is just nuts. The careerists are a major impediment to the campaign finance and lobbying reforms needed to fix these problems, because they are largely the ones propped up by the PACs and lobbyists.
I guess the question is, how do you view your representation?
If you view it as a collection of people who should be a representative sample of their communities, then term limits make sense.
If you view them as people who have a skilled job who you (the people) hire to represent you, craft law, and otherwise handle overseeing the business of the government, term limits make less sense. Disqualifying people who have been trained to do that job since birth also seems counter productive. (Although the right answer is to make that training available to more people.)
Is being a Congressperson a skilled job or an unskilled job? Are they a focus group or a board of directors?
IMHO, we need to stop electing people because we like them and start electing skilled, effective administrators. We also need to stop punishing people for working out deals or not voting with the party; compromise how we get things done. “Purity tests” are Anti-American.
Me too – especially when lobbyists write detailed self-serving minutia that should be left to rule making by the particular agencies. Having a bill that is 1000 pages long is ridiculous – no one in Congress can possibly read it, and it’s probably been worked on for months or years without any input from anyone who might have a different view.
We agree that political dynasties can be harmful. But clearly we disagree on the solution and on the degree of permissiveness necessary for the solution.
I don’t see–and you haven’t offered–a method to reach your goal of no political dynasties that doesn’t involve the party becoming involved in deciding among candidates based primarily or even solely on who their families are, regardless of their qualifications. My point is and has been that favoring that kind of decisionmaking in a democratic election is a deeply illiberal view.
That you continue to avoid discussing the fact that voters often express a preference for people with familiar names doesn’t help your argument; it just means you haven’t addressed a key problem with reaching your goal of no political dynasties.
Most of your comment is more denial of what I actually said. The only new bit is this:
I’m not avoiding it. I know this is a factor, in addition to the party establishment’s (very conservative and illiberal) preference for offering voters candidates from dynasties and “party royalty”. I just trust voters to vote on issues and policies when people with familiar last names are (as I described above) discouraged from running by the party as a matter of policy – it’s the party establishment that doesn’t trust voters in that way.
The good news is, young voters are pulling the party kicking and screaming into a new reality, where they’re going to vote for dynamic progressives like Cori Bush or Ocasio-Cortez instead of the hacks and timeservers and dynastic heirs that the DNC tends to favour. The bad news is, the party establishment will also continue to make it difficult for voters to have progressive candidates to vote for in general elections by (for example) not discouraging dynasties and “royalty”.
