4 ms·

My wife was part of a congressional primary campaign so I got to see some of this close-up. It’s hard to list all the reasons, but there is definitely a sort of

by paulgb 3y ago

My wife was part of a congressional primary campaign so I got to see some of this close-up. It’s hard to list all the reasons, but there is definitely a sort of institutional inertia that makes it hard to primary someone on the story of merely being the better candidate, unless there is an a prior consensus among voters that the incumbent needs to go. Some examples: - Congressional elections are expensive; incumbents have deeper-rooted donor networks to tap. - Civic groups that are already working with the incumbent want to continue the relationship. - General voter apathy around primary elections; even regular voters often skip primaries so finding people who will actually vote gets harder. - Name recognition; if someone shows up to the polls to vote for another ballot item but hasn't followed the congressional race, they'll probably put a box next to the incumbent unless they have a particular reason not to. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing -- high turnover of elected officials is disruptive to the system -- but there are clearly cases in which it overcorrects.

philipov 3y ago
The part about voter apathy towards primaries is important. It means that the sort of people who vote in primaries don't represent an unbiased sample of their party: they skew towards the extremes, because those people can be more easily mobilized. This means that primaries don't produce candidates capable of representing the median voter very well, and we end up with a choice between the canonical Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich. That's why the Freedom Caucus doesn't want McCarthy to use funding to influence primaries in their states; it would allow him to enforce party discipline on them. This becomes even worse when combined with "safe" districts where whoever wins the primary for the district's ruling party is nearly guaranteed to win the general election as well. It makes one wonder how democratic we should consider such an election to be. All this is to say that it's important to not just look at whether an institution is democratic in form, but whether it is also democratic in outcomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences will be obeyed. [https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.h...]
- bombcar 3y ago
  I feel that in the last 20+ years or so, the candidates have seem to forgotten the "appeal to the crazies in the primaries, pivot for the general". Then again, the whole point of democracy is that the voters will get what they want and get it good and hard.
  - philipov 3y ago
    The voters don't get what they want, they get what you offer them. With a good marketing budget, you might be able to convince voters to want what you're offering them. That's called Manufactured Demand.

by paulgb 3y ago

philipov 3y ago

The part about voter apathy towards primaries is important. It means that the sort of people who vote in primaries don't represent an unbiased sample of their party: they skew towards the extremes, because those people can be more easily mobilized. This means that primaries don't produce candidates capable of representing the median voter very well, and we end up with a choice between the canonical Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich. That's why the Freedom Caucus doesn't want McCarthy to use funding to influence primaries in their states; it would allow him to enforce party discipline on them. This becomes even worse when combined with "safe" districts where whoever wins the primary for the district's ruling party is nearly guaranteed to win the general election as well. It makes one wonder how democratic we should consider such an election to be. All this is to say that it's important to not just look at whether an institution is democratic in form, but whether it is also democratic in outcomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences will be obeyed. [https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.h...]

bombcar 3y ago
I feel that in the last 20+ years or so, the candidates have seem to forgotten the "appeal to the crazies in the primaries, pivot for the general". Then again, the whole point of democracy is that the voters will get what they want and get it good and hard.
- philipov 3y ago
  The voters don't get what they want, they get what you offer them. With a good marketing budget, you might be able to convince voters to want what you're offering them. That's called Manufactured Demand.