Independent thinker
Diamond Member
- Oct 15, 2015
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Not sure what you are trying to say. Are you saying that if all of this money wasn't being spent on campaigns, voters wouldn't be voting for incumbents to such a high degree? Personally, I think that is pretty naive and overly simplistic. And, there is no proof that voting out incumbents would really change much of anything. Didn't the incumbent get voted in in the first place because they were the other in the beginning? Was it money that bought them the office in the beginning? If not, then money is overrated as far as deciding who is going to win.A lot of people have wasted a lot of energy for a very long time trying to reform campaign finance. The Supreme Court has handed down decisions intended to limit campaign cash, but in recent years they have chipped away at previous rulings.
Congress has passed a bunch of campaign finance laws over the decades, the one most familiar to people being McCain-Feingold.
Yet, despite all this effort, each election cycle sets a new record of spending.
And the re-election rate of incumbents has been unchanged for at least six decades.
For the House, incumbents who run for re-election are returned to DC at a rate of 98 percent.
98 PERCENT!
Senators are re-elected at a rate of 80 percent.
Reelection Rates Over the Years
Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of the U.S. House of Representatives winning reelection. With wide name recognition, and usually an insurmountable advantage in campaign cash, House incumbents typically have little trouble holding onto their seats.www.opensecrets.org
Campaign finance reform has been one of the biggest failures of American politics.
That is because reformers have been treating the symptoms instead of the disease.