So, here’s an odd take on the upcoming 2018 congressional elections.\n
So far, we’ve seen a bunch of the Other Party’s Representatives not running for re-election, and not very many from My Party. At the moment ballotpedia<\/a> shows 28 (today Darrell Issa announced he is retiring, so it’s really 29) to 14. As as Jon Bernstein says<\/a>, this is the sort of thing that political scientists think lays the groundwork for a wave election. Or, rather, it’s a feedback situation—because there’s a wave election coming, people from the party that expects to lose its majority take the opportunity to retire, which means that there are open seats that are easier to flip, which makes for a bigger wave. The party that expects a wave finds it easier to recruit good candidates (and to raise money) in districts that aren’t ordinarily competitive, which makes for a bigger wave as well.\n Awesome!\n Now, my odd take: I’d like to see more Representatives from My Party join that list and not run for re-election.\n Here’s why: if there is a wave election in 2018, which is far from certain but looks distinctly possible, then there will probably be another wave election the other way, either in 2022 or 2024. Maybe, maybe not—heck, there may not be a 2024. But going by the last three decades, I would say that there’s a very good chance of the right conditions for the Other Party to flip a bunch of seats back at some point in the not-too-distant future. And at that point a bunch of Representatives from My Party will decide that it’s time to retire, setting up a feedback loop and fights for open seats in tough conditions.\n Let’s take, as a more-or-less random example, Bobby Scott, of Virginia’s 3rd district. I have nothing against the man, no reason to want him out of the House. He’s seventy years old, which isn’t a terrible mark against him as a Congressman, if he’s in good shape. But in 2024 he’ll be 77. If he retires now, and the 3rd district seat is open in 2018, there’s a very good chance that our Party will recruit a terrific candidate, and that the Other Party will have more difficulty recruiting, and that with one thing and another, he will hand over the seat to someone he is glad to see in it. If I’m right about the future and he leaves an open seat in 2024, without the incumbency advantage in a bad year for our Party, we could easily lose that seat. Pete DeFazio of Oregon’s 4th is 70 as well. Colin Peterson of Minnesota’s 7th is 73 already. Michael Doyle of Pennsylvania’s 14th isn’t quite as old, but other than that, I think the situation is much the same.\n There’s redistricting coming up, too— Raul Grijalva’s seat in Arizona’s 3rd is probably safe as long as the borders remain the same, but Arizona seems likely to gain a seat in 2022, which means that the borders will not remain. If the redistricting makes it difficult for him (sometimes Congressmen have to move house to stay in their district), and the other conditions look lousy, and he retires and leaves it open in a bad year, who knows? Marcy Kaptur of Ohio’s 9th could face something similar, or Bob Brady of Pennsylvania’s 1st. If Connecticut loses a seat, it could be Rosa DeLauro or John Larson. Tennessee’s 5th district seems like a safe seat, but if they redistrict a bit and Jim Cooper leaves it open in a bad year, who knows?\n Now, do I really want all of those fine Representatives to retire this year? No, I do not. I don’t want to give up the incumbency advantage, and I don’t want to give up the expertise that they have—if my Party takes back the House, I want John Larson there representing my own district, not some newbie from nowhere. At the same time, the cumulative effect of these ten Representatives—and another ten Representatives in similar situations who I suspect I could identify if it would help—choosing to do what is natural and right by staying on for an easy election is bad for the policy outcomes that they all pretty much want. With tremendous respect, I would like each of them to strongly consider the option of retiring this year.\n I have been saying for some time that Nancy Pelosi should announce that the next Congress would be her final Congress. I think I’m coming up on ten years of saying that. Each time I say it, I say that I don’t want her to retire yet<\/i>, just to prepare for retirement soon. I still don’t want her to retire yet… but it’s clear that she won’t retire until past whatever that optimal time would be. Among the things that will be lost will be her opportunity to help choose and to greatly influence the next Congressional Leader of Our Party. The same is true on a lesser scale for all those people I mention above.\n So that’s my take: we need to take advantage of the conditions of a potential wave election by (in some measure) changing those conditions to make them less favorable. But it still makes sense! To me, anyway.\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I> In Which Your Humble Blogger would gladly hold the door so that it doesn’t hit anybody. I hate it when the door swings shut that fast anyway, you might want to have a look at the mechanism, frankly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16259,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658\/revisions\/16259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"