Georgia's Democratic congressman David Scott has died at age 80. Scott was the first Black chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and was seeking his 13th term in Congress despite challenges from within his party.
Refusing to allow voters to re-elect their preferred candidate just because they’ve hit some arbitrary time limit doesn’t seem very democratic to me
We definitely have a ton of problems with our campaign finance regulations and enforcement of those regulations which makes it so incumbents have a hugely unfair advantage because they’re just swimming in oceans of perfectly legal bribe money, but terms limits are a bad way to fix that problem imo. Punishes voters for lawmakers being shitty.
I hear this argument a lot. “Voters should be trusted.”
Voters gave us Trump.
Once you have power, you don’t want to let it go. It doesn’t matter if you are elected every two years or every four. You have power and as you stay in office you accumulate more and more power. In theory it’s to help your constituents but in the end it corrupts.
We can decide that that people shouldn’t be career politicians. We can go encourage these people that they can still serve the public by doing other things besides holding office.
Democracy always has arbitrary rules to it, nothing can ever be “fully” democratic.
If the system would be that at the end of second term the politicians get (with dignity, grace, and honours) executed in order to keep the ruling body impartial & fresh that is just part of the system.
Exactly as much as that babies can’t vote, that non-citizens or women can’t vote (despite living there), electoral bs votes, mandatory/non-mandatory voting, etc.
Most of the above are there to mitigate a circumstance that isn’t really avoidable.
One of such is ppl not investing the time to study the issues & options (vibe-voting, or like supporting a sports team) … yet later showing consistent public support for things that are not getting even discussed.
So what is more/less democratic - “allowing” ppl to vote in the same 90+ incompetent scammer & then not getting eg pubic healthcare sorted, or simply allowing two terms max & possibly give voters more options by definition?
Technically an autocratic, unelected leader executing policies by public demand (voting, polling) can be more democratic than a system that elects leaders that then don’t execute the public will.
(Is it really undemocratic that presidents of most countries can’t seek a third term??? Or is the system more democratic bcs of it, bcs the demos has to crat more? Ofc not to mention the obvious risk of abuse of power which grows with each day a politician is in power - which directly threatens democratic values by default.)
Also there isn’t really a core difference between setting a term limit to the president (of whatever) vs the term limit of representatives (of whatever). Yes the issues are more pronounced with the president, but not dissimilar.
Refusing to allow voters to re-elect their preferred candidate just because they’ve hit some arbitrary time limit doesn’t seem very democratic to me
We definitely have a ton of problems with our campaign finance regulations and enforcement of those regulations which makes it so incumbents have a hugely unfair advantage because they’re just swimming in oceans of perfectly legal bribe money, but terms limits are a bad way to fix that problem imo. Punishes voters for lawmakers being shitty.
I hear this argument a lot. “Voters should be trusted.”
Voters gave us Trump.
Once you have power, you don’t want to let it go. It doesn’t matter if you are elected every two years or every four. You have power and as you stay in office you accumulate more and more power. In theory it’s to help your constituents but in the end it corrupts.
We can decide that that people shouldn’t be career politicians. We can go encourage these people that they can still serve the public by doing other things besides holding office.
Democracy always has arbitrary rules to it, nothing can ever be “fully” democratic.
If the system would be that at the end of second term the politicians get (with dignity, grace, and honours) executed in order to keep the ruling body impartial & fresh that is just part of the system.
Exactly as much as that babies can’t vote, that non-citizens or women can’t vote (despite living there), electoral bs votes, mandatory/non-mandatory voting, etc.
Most of the above are there to mitigate a circumstance that isn’t really avoidable.
One of such is ppl not investing the time to study the issues & options (vibe-voting, or like supporting a sports team) … yet later showing consistent public support for things that are not getting even discussed.
So what is more/less democratic - “allowing” ppl to vote in the same 90+ incompetent scammer & then not getting eg pubic healthcare sorted, or simply allowing two terms max & possibly give voters more options by definition?
Technically an autocratic, unelected leader executing policies by public demand (voting, polling) can be more democratic than a system that elects leaders that then don’t execute the public will.
(Is it really undemocratic that presidents of most countries can’t seek a third term??? Or is the system more democratic bcs of it, bcs the demos has to crat more? Ofc not to mention the obvious risk of abuse of power which grows with each day a politician is in power - which directly threatens democratic values by default.)
Also there isn’t really a core difference between setting a term limit to the president (of whatever) vs the term limit of representatives (of whatever). Yes the issues are more pronounced with the president, but not dissimilar.