Primaries
You probably don't need me to tell you that Senator Lieberman and Representative McKinney both lost their respective primaries last night. This strikes me as a positive, healthy development. It's natural for their to be a strong bias in favor of renominating incumbents, but at times this sentiment seems to reach absurd proportions among the Beltway conventional wisdom. Positions in congress aren't the personal property of the people who've won them, and it makes perfect sense for politicians who -- in their very different ways -- essentially go rogue and stop doing the work their constituents expect them to be focusing on to wind up losing their seats.
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I thought this was all decided back when there was the debate about term limits. How come people have to keep pointing out that how the electoral system works is that some people get motivated to run in primaries and other people get motivated to vote in them? :-)
August 9, 2006 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that turning over politicians is healthy. But can we honestly expect to see Senators Harkin, Dodd, Kennedy, Kohl, Leahy, Biden and/or Inouye get primary challenges when they are up for re-election? Heck I think Senator Byrd was a personal friend of Henry Clay and nobody is talking about getting somebody new from West Virginia. Your point is taken about politicians not doing what their constituents expect and facing primary challenges for it. I mean it could end up like Lieberman. I think turnout for the primary was 40%. Lamont got 52% of their votes which would mean in the primary he got 20.8% support of the registered democrats in Connecticut. This is supposed to be a ground breaking mandate for change?
But I have no problem with every politician having to face a primary challenge...it would be good for democracy and the party.
August 9, 2006 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink