- icantfindaname
- Jul 1, 2008
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What do you think of this stinking turd of an op-ed? Is this the majority opinion among your colleagues as a whole?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/politics-amateur-politicians.html
quote:
Politics Shouldn’t Be Like Open Mic Night
By JONATHAN RAUCH and RAYMOND J. LA RAJAJAN. 25, 2018
The number of Democrats aiming to unseat Republican incumbents in the midterm elections in November is rewriting the record books. According to the Campaign Finance Institute, by last fall the Democrats were fielding about twice the number of challengers as Republicans managed in 2009, the height of the Tea Party insurgency. In Wisconsin, 17 Democrats have filed papers to challenge Gov. Scott Walker; eight are running in Iowa’s open governor’s race.
More candidates, more activism, more enthusiasm: What’s not to like? The civic-spiritedness of many citizens who are engaging in electoral politics for the first time is impressive.
Another aspect of this flood of candidates, however, is reason for concern. In a recent study for the Brookings Institution, we took a close look at the post-Trump mobilization and found it to be a potentially transformative step toward the amateurization of American politics — a trend that should trouble people who worry about political polarization and government dysfunction.
Analysts and reformers obsess over who sends money into politics. Far more important, however, is who sends candidates. If reasonable candidates are lacking, then voters cannot make reasonable choices. For most of the country’s history, recruiting and vetting candidates was the job of political professionals: elected officials, party grandees and core constituencies such as unions and business organizations.
Even after candidate selection moved from smoke-filled rooms to primary elections, careerists held influence by means of what became known as the invisible primary, in which candidates contended for the support of party bigwigs and donors.
Continue reading the main story
The invisible primary had definite drawbacks — it overlooked too many qualified women, for example — but it also performed the single most essential function in politics: weeding out office seekers who are incompetent, extreme or sociopathic. Nothing worried the founders more than how to protect democracy from those with “talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity,” as Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers.
The invisible primary still happens, and it still matters, but there are many ways to circumvent it. Political aspirants have gained independent access to publicity (Donald Trump’s tweeting), money (Senator Bernie Sanders’s small-donor base) and campaign talent (a sprawling industry of consultants).
Outside groups learned that they, too, could bypass party gatekeepers. On the right, the Tea Party and other insurgent conservative groups discovered they could pull incumbent Republican members of Congress to the right by threatening them with primary challenges. Business groups and establishment Republicans fought back by recruiting and backing primary candidates of their own.
The left has been slower to build independent candidate pipelines, but it is now making up for lost time. Run for Something, Brand New Congress, Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Sister District, Swing Left and We Will Replace You are just a few of the new progressive-leaning groups recruiting candidates. Older groups have turbocharged their own efforts. Emily’s List, which recruits and backs female Democrats who favor abortions rights, says it has signed up more than 30,000 potential candidates.
The groups scout for military veterans, Sandersistas and others. But we found that what they generally do not scout for is competence at governing. In fact, many shy away from experience in government, on the theory that careerists are impure and inauthentic. As a representative of Justice Democrats, a group organized by former Sanders supporters, told us, “We don’t want career politicians, period.”
Although winning public office will never be easy, the proliferation of candidate pipelines is already making it easier for aspirants to run — and for groups to grow their own politicians. As a political consultant told us: “Access has been both demystified and democratized. People who used to think there’s no use running, because they would never win or it’s too big an unknown, are much less cowed by those factors.” Another consultant made the point more piquantly: “It’s become like a clown car. Everyone thinks they’re qualified and everyone jumps in.”
When we surveyed political consultants, they told us, by wide margins, that candidates in primary races are becoming more ideological and more inexperienced. Other research finds signs of a downward spiral. Extreme candidates heighten polarization in politics and paralysis in Congress, discouraging moderates and pragmatists (who reflect the preferences of most Americans) from entering politics.
Progressive activists we spoke with said they seek not just to influence policy but also to broaden the very concept of political viability. Though the goal is laudable, inexperience can compound the chaos that is already giving government a bad name. Even a handful of political renegades can have a crippling effect on a legislative body, which is one reason Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, was desperate to keep Roy Moore of Alabama out of the Senate.
To be effective at their jobs, politicians need know-how, connections and I.O.U.s, which take years to accumulate. President Trump lacked all of those assets, so it is no surprise he has had trouble governing. In Congress and state legislatures, frustrated leaders find themselves saddled with anyone and everyone who prevails in low-turnout primaries, no matter how nutty or disruptive.
If governing ability and candidate quality matter, and if special interests and purist ideologues are not to become the leading suppliers of our politicians, it is essential that parties and professionals maintain a prominent role in recruiting and screening candidates — alongside, not instead of, voters. By virtue of their insider status, they have a long-term interest in having parties govern responsibly.
Alas, reformers have been pushing to marginalize professionals still further. In the Democratic Party, so-called superdelegates — elected officials and party leaders empowered to vote as they wish at the presidential convention — will not and almost certainly cannot reject a popular victor, but they do encourage candidates to seek the advice and support of people they will be working with if elected. Reducing their role, as progressives have successfully campaigned to do through the Unity Reform Commission (created by the Democratic National Committee to examine the party’s nominating process), may appeal to the public’s populist instincts, but it is shortsighted for those who care about effective government.
Maintaining a competent, responsive political class requires vetting candidates through both popular and professional filters. Neither works well without the other. Both parties stand to benefit from recruiting more broadly, and, up to a point, amateurism can refresh politics.
But when the country finds itself taking seriously the possibility of a presidential contest between Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey, the cult of amateurism needs rethinking.
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Feb 8, 2018 07:13
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May 10, 2024 04:02
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- icantfindaname
- Jul 1, 2008
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It seems a bit all over the place and I would say that it's complicated. I think people should run, especially if there are open seats and we should encourage people to get involved. Primaries however, are frustrating for established candidates and while it is easy to say there is nothing to worry about if you have been good to your activists, it can waste your resources for a tougher campaign coming up. Plus, divides between primaried candidate can discourage people from working. Also, while new people bring new ideas, there is a certain type of new activist who wants everything now and won't look at broader context of a situation.
The only real kinda kernel truth here, for me personally, is that Hillary Clinton was ostensibly punished for doing her job correctly from people who were nascent into the national level politics. If you don't like her or her policies, fine but to come in and tell her that all her hard work made her unqualified for the job is a tough pill to swallow. She worked hard to have relationships with people in the party, she played the game, and then people decided that the rules are dumb and she was awful by playing by the rules .
Does this answer the question at all?
It is a much more reasonable answer than the column at least, yes
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Feb 9, 2018 01:47
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Feb 8, 2018 07:13
