90% Probability of Being Re-Elected

The Way It Works

If you look at political polls over the last twenty years, some of the most unpopular people in the world are in Congress. Yet, when you look at those unpopular people they continue to be re-elected over and over again.

It’s not “service to the country” it is a career. Career politicians are terrible for a country organized like the United States as a “democratic republic”. More like “service to yourself”. When President Kennedy said “Ask what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you” these people misheard it and put the first part of that phrase in the initial part of the sentence.

The longest-serving members of Congress tend to be in the Senate which makes sense since they receive six-year terms for their efforts to get elected. However, this list of Senators and their time in the Senate ought to make you think. Some of the longest-serving people are dead and died in office. John Dingell from Michigan inherited the office from his father and now his wife is in it. It’s really a coronation not “service”. Senator Leahy just left office in the last election cycle. He “served” from 1975 to 2022. Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd are two legendary Senators for their length of time in the Senate, but probably for the ability to sit through filibusters with uncomfortable diapers on.

Here are a few active Senators:

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley-43 years. That’s 8 Senate terms. He’s 90.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell-39 years. Longest serving Senate party leader ever.

NY Senator Schumer is a piker only serving in the Senate since 1999. He is the longest-serving Senator ever from New York State. Prior to the Senate, he served 9 terms in the US House of Representatives first election 1981. That’s over 40 years of service to himself.

Diane Feinstein of California who can’t speak anymore or even dress herself is 90. First elected to office in 1969 as a Board Supervisor in San Francisco. Mayor of SF, then Senator. That’s 54 years of “service”.

You could go down the rolls of the House and Senate and find that the majority of people have served a long time. When you look at what they did prior to getting elected to the national legislative houses, odds are good they were elected in their state. Before that, they might have been a city official or some sort of county prosecutor.

Career politicians are killing our country.

We have term limits on the Presidency. Republicans were overjoyed they didn’t have to try and beat Obama again the same as Democrats were happy they didn’t have to face Reagan a third time. If Trump happens to get elected during this cycle, the one saving grace for Democrats is he won’t ever run again.

Statistical data shows the power of incumbency. Academics have proven it, not that we needed the proof. In the latter half of the 20th Century, incumbents won re-election 90% of the time. Part of that can be explained because the bias of their district favors their political party. If Adam Schiff resigned today, an Adam Schiff clone would replace him. There is no way a Republican can get elected to his district.

The gerrymandering that takes place in the states also protects incumbents from competition. All states do it. Democrats are as bad as Republicans. Look at what happened in Nevada in redistricting, same with Colorado. They eliminated as much competition as they could in purplish states.

But, the other thing that protects incumbents is their own party. The party knows they have a tremendous chance at re-election once they get in. Hence, the party will kill off any primary competition that a candidate might face just to protect the office. They don’t care about things like intelligence when it comes to candidate quality. They only care about outward features, and if the person is in office and can win.

The parties need the patronage that comes with power. In addition, because of the power of incumbency, they can take the dollars they need for that race and put them in other more competitive races to try and grab more power.

That’s because political parties don’t really care about you. They care about owning the levers of power.

Hence, you see this event during actual testimony in the House happen and wonder how someone that dumb can possibly be re-elected. I give you Representative Hank Johnson from Georgia. Remember, this isn’t just a dumb opinion, it’s truly just being dumb. You might think fellow Representative Michelle Greene is dumb, but she knows islands can’t tip over. Maybe Johnson thought Maui would tip over if we got too many people and heavy firefighting equipment to one side of it. Hank’s been in Congress since 2007. Believe it or not, he was once a Georgia judge(!) and was elected to county office before being elected to Congress He is a benefit of a strong local Democratic political machine and is just a voting cog. As long as he votes the way they want him to vote, he will stay. As long as he puts the right people in the right positions for political patronage, he’s got a job.

This is also why Mitch McConnell would spend a bunch of money to preserve Lisa Murkowski, the daughter of her father Frank who held the seat before her, than support an upstart competitor. She was appointed to the seat by her father Frank who served 22 years in the Senate before becoming Alaska’s governor. Did she have a private-sector job? No, not on your life! The private sector is for the little people, the chumbalones. She was a state representative. Alaska has a tradition of long-term elected officials. See Ted Stevens and Don Young.

“Preserve” is a good word for a lot of these elected officials. Embalm might be better. McConnell can control Murkowski when he needs to control her and let her go off the rails the rest of the time.

I used to think that we needed to bust up the federal bureaucracy before we enacted term limits. I don’t think that anymore because the career politician works hand in hand with the bureaucracy to usurp freedom and grab more power regardless of political party. Democrats are better at doing this than Republicans because Democratic voters believe in the centralization of power more than Republicans do.

We do need to absolutely take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy. But, we need term limits too. It will help short-circuit the gerrymandering in states because every so often, there will be a more competitive primary at least to replace that person who is term-limited out.

My proposal is 6 terms in the House, 3 in the Senate. That’s 12 in the House, 18 in the Senate. If you play your cards right, you get 30 years in Washington which is a career but the odds are good it won’t work out that way. An elected official gets to work with three Presidents that way.

Going further, I would also enact Glenn Reynolds's tax idea on the incomes of elected officials and anyone that serves in government. If they work for a lobbyist, or if in their new role as a private citizen, they lobby the government, a minimum 50% tax and no write-offs on their income. Of course, the Fair Tax is the best idea for a tax system.