term limits are a crap idea. they end up giving power to unelected staffers and lobbyists. also they are undemocratic. amendment limiting presidential terms has been really harmful. prevents popular democrats from running. if there were no term limits, obama would be pres now.
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Replying to @nberlat
feels a lot like gerontocracy is a lot more undemocratic than term limits
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Replying to @Nymphomachy
it's not though. transferring power to lobbyists is really undemocratic. there's nothing undemocratic about voters selecting older reps. we should remove age restrictions on running though; that's undemocratic.
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Replying to @nberlat
There's an sizeable body of evidence that the power of incumbency just compounds with age, that name recognition eclipses policy, and that an apathetic electorate will just make non-meritocratically render candidates unchallengable via sheer inertia That is gerontocratic
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @nberlat
Like why does "term limits empower lobbyists" translate to "therefore gerontocracy is good" and not simply "term limits require a ban on lobbying"
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @nberlat
Banning lobbying is pretty difficult, especially if you have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom to petition
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more to the point, how exactly are we defining lobbying here "just ban it" seems like a tough proposal if what you want to ban is "calling up politicians and telling them what you want"
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect and
you might say "okay the problem is if you get paid to do that thing (which is otherwise totally legal and good)," but like noah says, where exactly does that leave professional activists? ngos? unions?
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for these reasons I think demonization of lobbyists is mostly a distraction. I'd much rather we focus on empowering unions so they have more say in legislation...
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The attack on "special interest groups" was a HUGE Republican meme when I was younger and in hindsight it's just an obvious strategy to slowly normalize attacking minorities
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(and unions! they were 100% talking about unions!)
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