Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents (and less important is that every opinion gets direct representation). I think for all the challenges in the US, it does this quite well.

View on HN

I beg your pardon?

Re-election rates for incumbents in the US Congress are very high [0]. In the House, they haven't dropped below 80% for at least 60 years. The Senate is slightly less stable, but still way above 60% ever since Reagan was elected.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-ra...

But that’s because people like their representative. It’s everyone else’s representative they don’t like.

People love wasteful spending on jobs programs.

The problem you have in the US is that you only have one alternative choice, so if neither choice is good, then you have no recourse

There are two components though. One is the ability to choose the party, the other is the pressure on a party to adjust so that it appeals to enough voters to elect it. If a party doesn't need to adjust to get some votes, as in proportional representation, then we (potentially) end up with coalitions that live or die based on narrow issues, which is what the original post I replied to alluded to. On the other hand, if you have two parties that fight over the votes, you come closer to having parties that optimize for broad appeal.

There are lots of problems with democracy (just fewer than the other potential systems as has famously been said). Imo a two party first past the post system can actually help regularize the will of the people by forcing parties to align with actually electable platforms and not dig in on single issues. Lots more to say about that, I just want to counter the usual rhetoric about how proportional representation or similar systems are somehow automatically better

Put simply, "when most of the thieving stopped, the thriving stopped."

Britain faltering is not "strange" and has little to do with political party, rather its ability to use violence to extract capital from productive outside entities and support its welfare state is nearing an end.

The Economist has a long history of avoiding the elephant in the room because the people running it are hopelessly biased.

Who are these productive outside entities who's capital is being violently extracted and why is this system (whatever it is) coming to an end?

I'm genuinely interested but you don't support your assertion with any evidence.

I think they are talking about the long tail of colonialism maybe. I locate Britain's suicide as very very recent - when they left the EU.

Please could you link that aritcle?

This isn't quite right. U.S politics is much less party-centric than it is in many other countries. Basically, though you've got a vast majority of candidates for X or Y office who are either democrats or republicans, their platform tendencies can be quite diverse, even though they often go against the grain of their own party's nominal positions. It's somewhat subtle, but this detail of U.S party politics makes for a strong multi-party diversity of candidates even though there are formally only two parties that mean anything for votes.

This is how you can have, for example, a surprisingly moderate republican senator like Susan Collins, sharing the same party with someone like Trump. And then also in the same party, a Rand Paul type.

I put to you that it in fact does this terribly, because if the government shits itself midway through term there is no mechanism for removal or new elections, as there are in most other countries. Wait out the 4 year term (or two year cycle) and deal with the tribalism

The upside is that the regular cycle means elections are at predictable intervals. US mid-term elections already have low turnout. Snap elections after a vote of no confidence only would decrease turnout.

> I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents

In think you are wrong on both points. The most important aspect of democracy is that it produces a government that reflects the popular will; being able to throw out the incumbents—at which the US does exceptionally badly—has some instrumental value to that, but isn’t an independent goal. And the pervasive use of FPTP elections is a big part of why the US is bad both at tossing incumbents and at providing effectivelt representative government.

I agree. And I'll point out that in the US 200 years ago, the only federal office directly voted on was house of representatives (not the senate, not the president).

In the US? I believe the average age of a representative is 75 and most of them have been there for a very long time.

> average age of a representative is 75

Come on. It's 58. I didn't even have to type to check this, just "Search Google for..."

Congress? Sure. But the Senate? Median age there is ~69 years. Median term length? Nearly 14 years!

https://infogalactic.com/info/List_of_current_United_States_...

OK, but members of the House are "representatives"; members of the Senate are "senators". So if you're going to regard mushbino's statement as referring to only one side, it has to be referring to the House.

It would be a bit odd if the median term length were much longer, and if you look at an actuarial table you'll see why. I guess that's one advantage to electing the ancient: built-in term limits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com