Are high re-election rates a sign that democracy is broken in America?

Michael Olson November 12, 2014, 9:04 PM Nov 12, 2014

We fact-checked this meme, and guess what? It's True! http://t.co/cdCiqA3PV2 pic.twitter.com/CLUuQdEgIu

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) November 12, 2014

“Voters hold Congress in low regard, yet they re-elect almost everyone,” writes PolitiFact.

Today’s Question: Are high re-election rates a sign that democracy is broken in America?

About the blogger

Michael Olson

molson@mpr.org • @publicmic

Editor, MPR News

Sue de Nim

One of many such signs. How about the fact that most Americans think a Canadian-style single-payer health care plan would be a good idea, but it has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing Congress? Likewise for an increase in the minimum wage, and the immigration reform plan that passed the in the Senate with bipartisan support.

RockintheUsa2014 now s.o.s2016

Oh please!!! as they say in the movie Frozen “LET IT GO!!!” Democracy will be broken when Usa forces are on U.S Soil arresting our own people. then we have something to worry about. right now all is well. I pray that never happens but leave it to the Republicans to act like Natzis.

jon

Can I get a clear definition of “us forces?”

Because we have police forces on US soil, with Military hardware, arresting people.

theoacme

America is not a democracy!

The official line, taught to me from my earliest school days, is that America is a representative republic, and not a democracy, which would be okay, except…

…that those who run the government only represent the rich, the powerful, the fascist people who are creating the Fourth Reich, whose slogan is “We rape the poor, we help the rich, we’re(expletive deleted!) Nazi, son-of-a- beech(wood-aged Budweiser) !”

Thanks to the treasonous Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court, America is so far from a democracy, that the United States will far more likely become the post-modern, Ayn Randian Sixth Reich, and I will be tortured and murdered by my own government within two years (my rape, torture, and execution to be broadcast live on 5 Eyewitness News by Jay Kolls and Stanley Hubbard personally, tonight at ten!), because I want democracy and equal justice under just laws, and we don’t have any of these now.

In other words, if you thought Krystallnacht and Auschwitz were bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet – th-th-th-that’s all, f-f-f-folks!

(And yes, I am writing my will now, not that the Republicans, led by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, will ever let me have anything to bequeath to my descendants, or even have any descendants.)

(Sadly, there will never, ever, ever be a Lisa Simpson moment where the government will save democracy, as George H.W. Bush did on The Simpsons.)

Yanotha Twangai

When you call the plutocrats and their allies in Congress fascists and Nazis, you’re just as wrong as Obama’s critics who call him a socialist. (There being no ideology of national solidarity and uniting behind a single leader, their agenda doesn’t fit the definition of fascism, any more than Obama, not pushing an agenda of state ownership of the means of production, fits the definition of a socialist.) That kind of inflamatory name-calling persuades no one but only hardens hearts.
- Gary F
  
  But hasn’t President Obama taken government control over 1/6 of our economy with the ACA? Government takeover of the two large automotive companies? Banks?
  
  Maybe not full socialism, but a big step towards it.
  
  Maybe that’s why the people are not approving congress and voted the way they did last week.
  - Yanotha Twangai
    
    The key provisions of the ACA are more accurately described as regulation of the private health insurance industry, not government ownership. And the bailout, restructuring and subsequent sale of those too-big-to-fail corporations, far from being socialistic, was aimed at propping up the capitalist system. But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of your rhetoric.
    - John Dilligaf
      
      What you see as propping up the capitalist system, I see as a failure of the government to allow capitalism to work. Those too-big-to-fail companies should have been allowed to, in fact, fail. Then their assets and employees could have been re-purposed in what most likely would have been a similar way, but run more efficiently.
    - Yanotha Twangai
      
      What you propose is what happened in 1929, and led to the Great Depression, with the result that there was so much misery and disillusionment with capitalism that there was a real danger of a socialist revolution in America. FDR’s New Deal, among other things, took the wind out of the American socialist movement and effectively propped up capitalism to this day. If those companies had been allowed to fail after the 2008 crash, the result would have been a much bigger leftward swing in American politics as more people turned away from the false promise that totally free markets somehow magically make everything better for everyone.
  - KTN
    
    Well, the President with the help of Congress actually control the whole economy, remember how a bill becomes a law.
    Are you talking about Western European Socialism, or Eastern style, or don’t you know – its all the same right. Until people can actually articulate a definition of Socialism, it’s probably best not to use the term, it belies a certain amount of fealty to Faux news.

AndyBriebart

Just because it didn’t go the Democrat’s way it’s broken?

Just because George Bush won the Presidency twice the liberals were calling to get rid of the Electoral college.?

Yanotha Twangai

Calls to abolish the electoral college go back decades before that. And it was after GWB’s first election (in which he actually lost the popular vote, which was not the case in his second election) that the calls were the loudest. You’d be more persuasive if you didn’t twist facts like that.
- Gary F
  
  Sure, abolishing the electoral college has always been talked about, but it gained steam after the Bush-Gore election. We haven’t always had “popularity polls” to the degree we’ve had today, do we don’t have a history of calling our democracy broken. His argument still stands.
  
  We live in a Republic, not a democracy. If you haven’t read up on the making of the Constitution, maybe a read of the Federalist papers or books about it might be in order.
  
  Checks and balances people. This is part of what makes our country strong and a long lasting.
  
  The wailing and gnashing of teeth has started! Oh, the cries from the left that the Republicans are Nazi’s has begun!
  - Yanotha Twangai
    
    On the contrary. We have a long history of calling our democracy broken. Or are you unfamiliar with the writings of Samuel Clemens?
    - Gary F
      
      Sure, but political popularity polls in today’s fast information age are much different.
      
      Seems like it is only “broken” when the Democrat’s lose.
    - jp
      
      How short-sighted. Seems to me when the Repubs lost they were crying the same song.
    - jp
      
      …same song with a new verse about voter fraud. Seems to me both parties are poor losers when they don’t get their way.

bob hicks

We live in a corporatist kakistocracy in which mkonied interests call the tune, and most politicians are venal, fear-mongering and incompetent.

bob hicks

Make that monied interests…

Yanotha Twangai

That apparent anomaly is easily explained. While most voters disapprove of Congress as a whole, they approve of their own senators and representatives. It’s the institution that’s dysfunctional, and no amount of electoral turnover will change that. In fact, that sort of dysfunction is inevitable in any form of representative democracy, because there will always be competing interests vying for control. The only way to avoid it is with some sort of dictatorship. On top of that, our Constitution deliberately enhances the dysfunction by dividing the legislature between two bodies, the House and the Senate, which have to agree before anything can happen, and by having the executive be elected separately, unlike a parliamentary system. It would be surprising if Congress as a whole ever got an approval rating much higher than its disapproval rating.

John Dilligaf

Correct – the system was designed to be dysfunctional to avoid a boatload of unnecessary regulation from the federal government. Now we complain that there’s not enough bipartisanship. The best case for the people is a divided executive branch, because they actually have to agree on something from both sides to pass a law.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  Wrong. It wasn’t to a boatload “a of unnecessary regulation”, but to promote stability and avoid whipsaw changes in government policy. The system makes it as hard to get rid of regulations as it is to enact them.
  - Yanotha Twangai
    
    That should be, “It wasn’t to avoid a boatload…”

Pearly

Wow. MPR is taking this latest midterm shellacking really hard.

kevins

Wow…attributing personhood to a corporate entity. How nuvo.

KTN

Not broken, but certainly dysfunctional, which I put squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans. When the then minority leader announced after Obama’s election, the Republican party would stand in the way of EVERY initiative offered by the President, well that puts this on them. I mean, here is a party still unable to reconcile if the President is a citizen. If they ever figure that out maybe they can start leading, but I’m not holding my breath.

Jim G

Yes. Our system of government has been increasingly captured by American corporations and the wealthy that control them. It serves their needs and wants to a greater degree than at any time since the Robber Baron era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Our working/middle class wages have been stagnate for the last three decades while at the same time we have seen soaring corporate profits. These profits, shared among a sliver of our population, make possible hidden donations to candidates obscuring the true players. The fact that less than 50% of our citizens nation-wide vote make the assertion that we have a functioning representative democracy… ludicrous,

Gary F

What’s you opinion of Thomas Steyer? Styer OK? Koch brothers bad?

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/23/358238870/big-spending-democrat-faces-off-with-koch-brothers-in-campaign-ads

Jim G

Liberal billionaires like Steyer, a Hedge Fund CEO, and conservative libertarian corporate owners like the Koch brothers are funding candidates that support their hot issues. The trouble is we citizens don’t actually know which candidates are being flooded with cash because of Citizens United. We should at least to able to find out who is buying our representatives’ ears and souls. These are reasons why no influential banking CEO has ever been convicted of the market manipulations that caused the Great Recession in 2007. We are also considering bringing more Canadian Sand Oil Crude into our country when our fracking oil companies are providing all the gas and oil we’ll need for the next century. Yes, Steyer and the Kochs are bad for representative democracy… a symptom of our broken political and economic system. All this money erodes the power of the individual voter…where power should reside.

Rich in Duluth

Our representative democracy is not broken. It is a system that works just fine when an informed, engaged, rational voter participates in it. I lay the responsibility for the 95% dissatisfaction with Congress at the feet of those who are complaining, the voter.

The simple fact that political advertising, as warped and dishonest as it is on both sides works, shows that the average voter is not really paying attention. The fact that people vote for representatives who say that they will not compromise, says that the voter does not understand how representative government works. The fact that voters still believe that the President is a socialist, a Muslim, or not a citizen or that Republicans are fascists shows that the voter is voting with his emotions and not his brain.

Maybe it’s because we are emotional beings who think, instead of thinking beings that have emotions that we find it easier to repeatedly vote for those who are not serving us well.

Mark in Ohio

The returning of our elected representatives to their jobs even though the chamber has a less than 20% approval rating is clearly an indication that the system is, if not broken, then severely sprained. It’s all well and good to say “throw the bums out”, but when the alternative isn’t any better, or possibly worse, what are your choices. most people are at least marginally rational, and would tend towards a “do no (more) harm” mentality, and select the devil they know. Most people just hope that their elected officials leave them alone so they can get on with their lives.

When the only candidates are those already beholden to the existing oligarchy, or those with their own enormous personal wealth, what choice do you have? Most people today are too busy trying to survive to have a significant long term view. It’s hard to worry about next year when you are concerned about getting through next WEEK. Compound that with the way we have been taught not to trust anything by the duplicity of our political, religious, and journalistic leaders, and add to that our knee-jerk reactions, short attention span, and general anti-intellectualism, and I don’t see any path where our system could be functional.

USA#!STEPUP!!!S.O.S!!!2016VOTE

BLAH BLAH….If We as Human Beings really want to make a Change…The only attention that will make the Republican and Democratic Government see eye to eye with most Americans is to start looting and burning….Now I for one am not going to go to jail. So life is good. See you at the Polls in 2016. Right now i do not see millions of Humans at the White House organizing or demonstrating. So the best plan right now is to vote. We all could boycott Black Friday but i really do not thinks that is going to help either. Do the right thing and organize or start a third party. Our system is not broken. Like I said before until you see millions looting and burning or USA Ground Troops arresting Humans on U.S soil then we have a problem. I for one do not want to see this. Educate your self right now. 2016!!!

PaulJ

It’s the reelection process that is broken. Treating voters as dumb brutes who decide via creepy TV ads, has corrupted the system. Deciding whether the dumb brutes are to blame or cynical brutes who make a living off the system are, doesn’t really help solve the problem.

James

One of many signs that our democracy is broken. Here is a more complete list:

– The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th most powerful people in the country are not elected by the people (the 2 majority leaders and the 2 minority leaders)

– The fact that roughly 90% of people in the country will vote for their party, independent of the candidate’s qualifications.

– And related….That any woman would vote Republican, ever.

– The fact that there are only 2 parties.

– I can donate to a candidate and it is not tax deductible. I can donate to a PAC, anonymously, and it is tax deductible.

– Our economy is growing faster than any other “developed world” economy. Yet the Dems got tossed, largely because of economic issues.

– Obamacare is train wreck. It needs to be fixed. And not one candidate offered up suggestions for fixing it. (Throwing it out completely does not count.)

– Our national debt was a huge issue when it was $3 trillion. Now that it is $18 trillion, not a single candidate talks about it, and we the voters, don’t ask.
I can go on for hours, but will stop here.

Jamie

Who are you to tell women who they should vote for, James?

PAC contributions are NOT deductible.

The majority and minority leaders are elected to the house or senate prior to being elected to leadership positions within those bodies.

The national debt is so large that it’s a national security issue.

There should be a way to make a vote for a third party candidate count. I’d love to vote for a (small L) libertarian candidate, but I’ve been burned before in a close election voting for the third party candidate.
- James
  
  My sloppy language. But for politically active groups dressed up as a 501(c)(3) or with a sibling organization that is a 501(c)(3) donations are deductible.
  - Pearly
    
    “sloppy language” Or true colors
- James
  
  Being elected to congress or the senate by a relative handful of voters in a state or a district and then becoming the 2nd through 5th most powerful person in the country is the issue I was getting at.
  - Jamie
    
    True enough, but I don’t know how to get around that.
    
    We have a local problem with unelected leaders that’s even worse. The Met Council is a completely unelected body with more power than many of the city councils it supposedly represents.
    - JQP
      
      The MSP area has far too many individual bodies of city government, far too many school boards, far too many extra administrative codes.
      
      We need to dramatically simplify the metro area government system with fewer “governing bodies”. They absorb money and time in excess of the value they provide to the end process.
      
      We have devolved to far down the path of every voice that wants to say no can stop the thousands that say yes … on every last tiny issue.

David P.

High re-election rates are a sign (or result) of:
• Gerrymandered congressional districts.
• No “Truth in advertising” requirement in political ads.
• Unrestricted and largely unregulated cash.
• Largely uninformed or single issue voters.
• A citizenry that wants more than it’s willing to pay for, and believes it can be so.
• A citizenry with amazingly poor memories.
• A citizenry that by and large doesn’t make a thorough understanding of the issues, the candidates’ positions and how it affects them personally and our country.
• A citizenry that doesn’t fact check political claims, that doesn’t engage in critical analysis when deciding the fate of their vote.
• A candidate selection pool that draws more and more from the party’s fringe.
• Relentless pandering to the base, which alienates the majority of citizens inside the bell-curve.

JQP

132 families gave 60% of all political funding in the United States last year.
Those 132 families have more “speech” than 130 million Americans.

===->->->The United Monarchy of America is working as designed.

JQP

democracy was broken in small steps….

– corporations are people
– money is speech
– letter of the law trumps intent of the law

these and many others…. have done the democracy in. what we have now is private sector money-ocracy , from which the wealthy drive what we hear, who we vote for and what our government does.

Sheldon Adelson, George Soros and the PAC-Maniacs are ruining this country like no other force could…

they are the vile, stinking, germ that is rotting this country from the inside.

Tom Johnson

The excuse I hear most often is “my representative” is okay, it is the other guys that are the problem.