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There is a promotional video going around ‘starring’ Michael Douglas, parts of which I found pretty interesting. I won’t provide the link because that really isn’t what I want discussed and if you’re interested you can certainly find it.
One point he made about the election process which shows why congress is so awful
1. 85+% of congressional districts will elect someone based entirely on their party. Either democrat or republican, doesn’t matter who is running, the person in the ‘correct’ party will win the election (AOC is a rather obvious example of this).
2. Based on #1, this means the party primary will determine who goes to congress.
3. Fewer than 20% of party voters typically vote in the party primary.
4. Far left/far right voters are more likely to vote during the primary than more moderate voters. I could see this as single issue voters and the fringes. They get all riled up and vote for the far left/far right candidate.
5. Therefore (or ERGO as I learned in logic class), the fringe has a disproportionate influence in who sits in congress.
I would assume folks here discussing politics are probably more likely to vote every time, that said…
(I could have done a poll but not sure that would have told much) if you are fairly moderate, say in the plus or minus 30th percentile, are you likely to vote in the primary? If you don’t normally vote in the primary, is this at all eye opening?
5. Therefore (or ERGO as I learned in logic class), the fringe has a disproportionate influence in who sits in congress.
This is the reason. The center left/right can agree on most things. If you take something like marijuana legalization for example most liberals support it, at least half of Republicans support it. A Republican politician voting for it however is not going to win liberal votes, for moderate Republicans it's a wash no matter which way they because they are concerned about other issues. The only outcome is losing the fringe Republican votes... the tail wags the dog
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