I think the problems of term limits are reduced at the local level, because there is less lobbying (and term limits give politicians less time to practice handling lobbyists).
If people take a term off and then come back that's also reassuring. If people who take a term off don't run again that might demonstrate that given time away they decided it really wasn't worth the effort (which might make sense at that salary)
AIUI term limits are meant to reduce incumbent advantages, where no one has a chance of being unseated because they can use their power to get lobbyist donations or do favors for special interests. How much does that apply at the local level?
Here "incumbent advantage" means widespread name recognition (no small potatoes), and a big stack of signs from previous years that they can put around town, with a little sticker that says "Re-" in front of "Elect", and save a ton of money when most candidates don't have a spare 3K to drop on signs to cover the town.
...hear perspectives without having a your nose 2" from the policy docket
Not reading shit is something you can do regardless of the offices you hold.
Here the CW is that signs do not have a good track record at boosting votes, especially not compared to their high cost - though they're certainly a sign of prestige.
What you say "having to take a term off gives you perspective", is someone actually proposing a term limit law that only requires a term off, then lets the former incumbent try again?
Yep. It's just a limit on consecutive terms.
Is there any good reason to think local voters can't decide for themselves when they think it's time for a local elected official to take a a break from office?
I feel like the principle of "let the people elect who they want" should be pretty sacred.
Here the CW is that signs do not have a good track record at boosting votes, especially not compared to their high cost - though they're certainly a sign of prestige.
Yeah, that's bullshit. Party workers just hate dealing with signs because they tend to be a pain in the ass.
Especially because the locations of the signs does so much signaling as to what kind of candidate it is - which kinds of businesses, which parts of town, which homes where you personally know the residents, etc. So you can make a vague educated guess on whether or not you'd like the candidate based on just that, if you're familiar with the town.
In like September everybody on the Biden calls was like "we really need signs". I always thought signs were pointless, but I guess not. I just remembered in 2017 not to let my son trick or treat at the two houses with "Trump" signs in 2016.
Here in Virginia they (I guess, we) have the governor and lieutenant governor are banned from consecutive terms. Right now a former governor is running again. But he's the first that I can think of to do that. I'm skeptical that the ban does much. Former governors have done well at leveraging their time in office. Now that former governor McDonnell has made corruption even easier, I expect logrolling is more common among those who want to roll logs.
I guess, we
Yep. The downside of democracy is that it is at least partially your fault.
9: It might be different here where you have to get tens or hundreds of thousands of votes to win most seats. (And my sources aren't party workers - secondhand, but consultants who would take a cut of the spending. Though they could prefer mailings for more obscure self-motivated reasons.)
Anyway, back to term limits, there does seem to be a special kind of ossification at the city/county level where (a) there's no partisan primary (hasn't been for ages) and (b) people can keep their seats via a more personalized incumbency advantage for 20-30 years. By contrast, people like Pelosi and Schumer, while their keeping their leadership forever isn't ideal, there seem to be more mechanisms for party faithful and activists to move them over time. So I do sometimes ponder if a 16- or 20-year term limit at the local level would be a positive.
Our mayor is running for his fifth term. Everyone who wants to replace him is a lot worse, same as last time and the time before.
A candidate I would have seriously considered thought about it and decided to pass. One can never blame people who don't want to run for local offices: the ratio of aggravation to being able to make a positive difference can be low.
Our term limits are bad at the legislature, but people like voting in dumb non-solutions, and that's how we got them.
It might be different here where you have to get tens or hundreds of thousands of votes to win most seats.
I draw my lesson from watching the NH primaries up close, where the Warren campaign was deeply focused on building out a voter database and seemed to feel that signs were beneath them, and came in fourth.
Meanwhile, who always puts up a shit-ton of signs and consistently outperforms the predictions of expert analysts? Donald Trump.
I don't think that's very much evidence; presidential candidates' outcomes are always overdetermined. But the CW I passed along is probably at least as weak.
No, its not much evidence, its just something I saw up close and was frustrated by at the time.
I think the value of a good sign campaign is building community and making people feel like they are part of a side and that most of the people around them are on the same side and you know that because you see the signs that are around your neighborhood posted by people who are like you. Trump does this very well, but I think the GOP tends to have pretty good sign game at other levels too.
My new project is going to be blogging local politics. My plan is to spend the next year trying to establish the habit and build up the archives, and then try to share it next summer-ish.
Anyway, I came up with a great name for the blog.
21.I love the About page. Should have a picture of Lady Bird though.
21 Are you nuts?
Great name, but I looked at some of the posts: what a huge time sink this is going to be.
Crazy impressive blogging. I wonder how many like-minded citizens you will attract. Also, did you bring up term limits partly because you're contemplating a run for city council? Or do you see yourself as more of a gadfly?
Six hour council meeting is brutal. Ours usually don't go more than three, much more often less than two.
Of course, our city is 1/3 the size. Weird that it scales linearly.
28: I knooooow. I'm conflicted. It's insanely time-consuming. BUT, I will cycle off my current city-commission (roughly 2-5 hours every two weeks) next March. So there's some trade-off of time there.
I feel like it's really in my wheelhouse for my skills and interests, and the news coverage of city council is terrible.
30: For a moment, years ago, it seemed neat to be on city council, but campaigning seems like a nightmare and the workload is insane, and you have to be perpetually extroverted. All those things sound terrible. But getting to frame the conversation in town and imprint people on my perspective? Yes please!!
That is amazing. If you manage to keep it up, it'll be a terrific resource.
If you go for a bit and then quit, it will be an adequate but limited resource.
30: oh and, term limits came up on Tuesday's meeting. Just haven't gotten to that item yet.
33: Thanks!!! I'm really hoping I can stick with it. It feels like a passion project that I could really stick with?
I accept the experience argument, but favor term limis at all levels anyway. Bad actors are removed by default, and it takes extraordinary effort for said actors to amend themselves out of that. It's a very simple and very powerful safety mechanism. I see some of you rosy eyed Americans seem somehow still to be expecting the best of your local politicians and therefore erring on the side of giving them a chance. Let this third world vagabond remind you that you have err the other way; reliance on norms instead of institutions is what got you Trump; the same in miniature can happen anywhere, and those caciques can not only do ill in their own offices, but also serve as cogs in the machines of caciques at higher levels; IIRC the Philippines works like this.
To split the difference, I'd say very generous term limits for noobs,* say 12 years, falling as one goes up the ladder. **
*Real noobs. If your uncle was mayor or something you aren't a noob.
**And maybe exceptions giving extra terms to real noobs first elected at higher levels.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=caciquismo%20philippines
21 last took me a while. At first I thought you were trying to get banned in Botswana, but togolosh hasn't benn around in forever.
And further, become necessary parts of all political machines at higher levels, whether those machines want it or not.
There are very few if any countries to my knowledge that impose term limits on legislators, which makes me think it is probably a bad idea. Wiki cites a lot of research showing that they are bad things.
Interesting. I'd counter that most countries have middling to poor governance, and hazard that legislators in most consitutions are uniquely well positioned to prevent limits being imposed.
True, of course, but it's not immediately obvious that the bad governance is happening because of career politicians who keep getting elected. In fact the worst governance (at least in countries with elections) seems to come from exactly the sort of outsider that term limits are supposed to encourage. Johnson, Trump, Berlusconi, the Five Star movement and so on. If you want to stop corruption, stop corruption - don't muck around with the freedom of people to choose their representatives.
Also the Heritage Foundation has been pushing for term limits for ages, so it must be a bad idea.
Non profit boards of trustees do seem to have term limits. And church councils and the like. Those are part-time, volunteer roles, and I think most of the people in them are relieved to finish their terms.
I think the conventional wisdom here in Ohio is that term limits in our state legislature has led to rule by lobbyists. The naive explanation for this is that the lobbyists, since they stick around, are the only ones that actually understand the issues and how the legislature works. The more cynical and correct explanation is that with term limits the legislators only have a few years to cash in and insure their future employment.
I don't think, at the municipal level in the US, that one wants to do anything that makes the positions of city manager and the department commissioners more effectively powerful than the elected body that oversees them. In a lot of places, they seem to all but dictate policy already.
45: Why can't both be true at the same time?
There's a certain 'no goes there any more, it's too crowded' character to the arguments in favor of term limits that undercuts them pretty substantially. People keep reelecting a guy they don't want? Or is it that people keep reelecting a guy *you* don't want? This has always struck me as more of a 'those Democrats keep getting reelected because they give voters free stuff, and we can't compete with that' vibe.
That's for legislative positions. Executive positions have too much actual ability to distort election results, and are generally difficult to restrain in the exercise of that power, nepotism, and all sorts of bad stuff.
Yeah term limits might be good for presidents, but that's only because presidential systems are horrible. Prime Ministers don't need term limits.
45, 46: I'll add that business interests, especially at the local level, are empowered by frequent political turnover because their money can the name recognition and political organization that are otherwise hard for a newcomer to put together.
I might modify my position to give more leeway to legislators than executives (I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on that and you all make good points), but stick with my basic position. Legislators can be caciques just as much as executives; and again ISTR the Philippines is notorious in this regard (and I keep pointing there because so much of their constitution is modelled on the American). And I question to what degree the citizenry are re-electing who they want as opposed to being re-presented with incumbent candidates because no-one else thinks they can beat an incumbent.
I also think the Trumps & C aren't a product of term limits as such. Let's say Obama (also an outsider candidate btw, more so than BJ or Berlusconi) had been reelected another 2 terms, or 3. Then he would have retired, as everyone does. And then? Coin toss the Republicans would have won the next election, with a horrible candidate (quite possibly Trump) because horrible was the trend of the party. Likewise AFAIUI with Johnson and Berlusconi.
If you want to stop corruption, stop corruption - don't muck around with the freedom of people to choose their representatives.
I say do both, on grounds again of the default safety mechanism.
In fact the worst governance (at least in countries with elections) seems to come from exactly the sort of outsider that term limits are supposed to encourage
I also doubt this is true, especially when one considers the whole set of democracies, most of which don't work particularly well. The outsiders might be the most spectacular failures (Bolsonaro, Thaksin) but they are surrounded and produced by equally rotten governance from incumbents (see Brazil, Thailand). And there are long-timer insiders who are also terrible. Duterte, Mugabe, [insert almost any African, Latin American, South Asian leader]. If one counts up all the democracies systematically, I think one will find a lot more shitty insiders than outsiders.
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So, it's break the stereotype day at the US Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor, for a unanimous court, denying relief to an immigrant who's clearly been treated unfairly* and Justice Thomas, also for a unanimous court, restoring Guam's ability to pursue claims against the US for a toxic waste dump.
* Guy gets a green card in 1990, and the next year gets a DUI. 7 years later, the US initiates deportation based on the DUI. Guy loses at the Imm court, so he gives up and leaves the country. Then, 6 years later, the US Supreme decides that a DUI isn't sufficient for deportation, and so the guy should not have been removed. Guy is back in the US a decade after that, and no they want to deport him for coming into the US notwithstanding his prior deportation (now understood to have been improper) order. District Court and Ninth Circuit say 'yeah, the prior order was bogus, you can stay.' Supreme Court: sorry, but the statute is written in such a way that we can't help you.' Didn't exhaust admin remedies.
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It's where Pizza Hut put the trash.
52 People run against legislative incumbents all the time. How long was AOC's predecessor in office?
Nancy Pelosi is going to win, but that's not because she can have opponents jailed. Could Feinstein be beaten? Maybe. Up to now, the alternatives have not seemed better to a majority of voters. I don't know anything about the Philippines, but here in the US, people advocate terms limits precisely because they don't want to have Feinstein.to convince voters that their candidate is better than Sen Feinstein.
They used term limits in Nebraska to get rid of Democratic state legislators who kept winning even after the area went fucknuts.
54 -- The case is about whether a Clean Water Act settlement between Guam and the US started the time running to file a CERCLA contribution claim, which, if so, Guam filed years out of date. Answer: No, a CERCLA contribution claim would only be triggered by a settlement that resolves a CERCLA claim.
CERCLA is the 'superfund' statute. There's a large body of law about how to get prior landowners/polluters to pay for cleanups. The Navy was putting toxic waste in that dump during WWII, I bet, and for decades thereafter.
(Many years ago, I was involved in a contract case over the cleanup -- in the 2000s -- of toxic waste from WWII era armament factories. There's plenty of bad shit still out there.)
And I question to what degree the citizenry are re-electing who they want as opposed to being re-presented with incumbent candidates because no-one else thinks they can beat an incumbent.
If no one thinks they can beat an incumbent, it must be because the citizenry, when presented with opportunities to oust incumbents, has declined to do so a very large percentage of the time. Which, in turn, seems to mean they are reelecting who they want.
If incumbents are hard to defeat because of the advantages of incumbency, perhaps public financing of elections is an answer?
57: Cuts both ways, no? Lots of places turning blue.
If no one thinks they can beat an incumbent, it must be because the citizenry, when presented with opportunities to oust incumbents, has declined to do so a very large percentage of the time. Which, in turn, seems to mean they are reelecting who they want.
This argument strikes me, as you imply yourself wrt campaign finance, as being a classical liberal argument that disregards structural realities -- "If Walmart is as shitty as everyone says, someone would have launched a competitor and customers/suppliers would have switched." But Walmart is a $400bn incumbent, launching a competitor isn't practically possible.
And there's another, vaguer point, harder to quantify, gerontocracy. Median age in the US is 38; in the House 57, the Senate 62. That Congress would be older is unremarkable, but by such a margin? Formative years in the late 1970s-early 1980s vs late 1990s-early 2000s. Huge worlds of difference there.
The baby boom is now an impacted feces in the colon that is these United States.
If someone could match Walmart's pricing -- meeting those shopper's reasons for going there -- then hell yes they could compete for those shoppers. They typically can't, because of the scale. And yet there are lots of stores other than Walmart, and lots of people shop at them.
I don't shop at Walmart for political reasons. I don't shop at Dollar General because I've seen what they sell.
a classical liberal argument that disregards structural realities
It's really just a question of which structural realities you find more salient. Democracy has its issues, and by itself I personally don't think being pro-democracy is dispositive as regards term limits, but one has to acknowledge there are real structural benefits to democracy.
Rent-seekers gain a structural advantage from term limits, as explained in 45, 46, 50 and a number of other places, including, indirectly, in 42.2.
It's true that a lot of Democrats pay lip-service to term limits, but that's because it's one of those positions -- like deficit hawkery -- that is a totally Establishment position that can be sold as anti-Establishment. The real work of term-limit politics is done by oligarchs and their dupes.