One thought on “Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-24-2011”
While uncontested races are indeed unfortunate, I think you’re overstating the degree to which it is a failure of democracy. Candidate selection is almost always done via some form of public voting in a primary (I’m sure you know this better than I but some of your readers may not). To take an extreme example, Washington DC is around 90% Democratic, which means contested or not the mayoral election will always be won by the Democratic candidate. But the Democratic candidate is elected in a democratic primary which is hotly contested, no less so because everyone is well aware it is essentially the “real election”. Forty years ago a Republican candidate in Massachusetts might safely advocate more or less the same platform as a Democrat in Utah, but the nationalization of party brands has made this increasingly difficult and the result is more elections where it just doesn’t make sense to run under one brand or the other. This is lamented in some quarters but I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing.
What I’m concerned about are uncontested races where the primary was likewise uncontested. That really is a failure of democracy, but since gerrymandering is basically irrelevant to primaries, I think it reflects the growing advantage enjoyed by incumbents. Some advantage is natural and probably desirable, but in national office races, at least, I think the advantage has become too large.
While uncontested races are indeed unfortunate, I think you’re overstating the degree to which it is a failure of democracy. Candidate selection is almost always done via some form of public voting in a primary (I’m sure you know this better than I but some of your readers may not). To take an extreme example, Washington DC is around 90% Democratic, which means contested or not the mayoral election will always be won by the Democratic candidate. But the Democratic candidate is elected in a democratic primary which is hotly contested, no less so because everyone is well aware it is essentially the “real election”. Forty years ago a Republican candidate in Massachusetts might safely advocate more or less the same platform as a Democrat in Utah, but the nationalization of party brands has made this increasingly difficult and the result is more elections where it just doesn’t make sense to run under one brand or the other. This is lamented in some quarters but I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing.
What I’m concerned about are uncontested races where the primary was likewise uncontested. That really is a failure of democracy, but since gerrymandering is basically irrelevant to primaries, I think it reflects the growing advantage enjoyed by incumbents. Some advantage is natural and probably desirable, but in national office races, at least, I think the advantage has become too large.