Bernie Sanders: Term limits 'are undemocratic'

[Uncle Joe]

MUSCATINE, IOWA — Sen. Bernie Sanders said he opposed setting term limits for members of Congress and reiterated his support for public funding of elections as a mechanism to challenge incumbents.

(snip)

"No, because term limits are basically undemocratic. You got term limits right now, and that is throw out the people you don't like. What happens if you have someone you like?" Sanders said. "I think term limits are undemocratic because people won't be able to vote for people they like."

Instead, Sanders, 77, said overturning Citizens United and signing a bill that allows public funding for congressional elections would allow the average person to run for office without being beholden by special interests.

(snip)

"What may make sense is, if not term limits, then rotating judges to the appeals court as well," Sanders said at the We the People Summit on April 1. "Letting them get out of the Supreme Court and bringing in new blood."

(snip)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bernie-sanders-term-limits-are-undemocratic

[dawg day]

1. I agree definitely that life-time tenure for judges is a bad idea-

It wasn't bad in 1783, when most people didn't live to see 50.

But now there are judges at all federal levels who could still be trumping on us 40 years from now.

[Power 2 the People]

3. +1

[bernie59]

16. It wasn't bad in 1783, when most people didn't live to see 50.

That's a little misleading. Once you got into adulthood, your life expectancy was much higher. Our first 6 presidents died at age 67, 90, 83, 85, 73, 80.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. The life expectancy numbers are misleading. The *average* life expectancy

in those days was a lot less than it is now, but that's because infant mortality was much higher. But if you made it through childhood you stood a pretty good chance of living to old age - John Adams, for example, lived to be 90.

[atreides1]

32. Truth be known

The average life expectancy between 1750-1800 was 36 years. People who lived beyond that, were the exception, not the rule!!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

34. No, average means exactly that.

You add up all the ages at death and divide them by the total number of people. If 50 people lived to be 72 and 50 didn't survive infancy, the average for those 100 people would be 36. If all 100 lived to be 36 it would be 36. If 20 of them lived to be 10 and the other 80 lived to be 42.5 the average would be 36.

[Kentonio]

36. Here's an interesting article about it.

https://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html

[tymorial]

2. Disagree.

Small states have far too much power in the Senate and unseating someone can be extremely difficult when the population is small and long term incumbents weild power and have the funding to wage reelection campaigns.

[Uncle Joe]

4. I believe that's why Bernie is also for public funding of elections and

overturning Citizens United.

P..S. I also believe Bernie's model of campaigning subsisting on small donations will become the new norm.

[tymorial]

22. That is fair. Limiting campaign funding would address part of the problem

However, when Wyoming of even my home state which is as blue as it can get (Rhode island) has the same senatorial power as California... it doesnt make sense under the current system.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

33. Yes... but, where are Bernie's tax returns!!! (Just saving others the trouble.)

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[Igel]

10. That just means you don't like them.

"Undemocratic" requires having a good, agreed-upon definition of "democracy."

I'm not sure that Sanders has one that he sticks with consistently. It's hard when most people don't define the term well and in the course of a speech you don't want to point out your specific definition and any fine-grained adjustments you make. It makes the speech sound like a lecture on forms of democracy.

We don't have a majoritarian democracy. We have a republic. We don't have one that's clearly based on proportional representation, but that's not perfect because it's not fine-grained enough to be perfectly proportional; moreover, ours has two different kinds of representation based on state borders. That's because ultimately we're a union of states not originally established as a single all-powerful central government broken down into accidental internal borders (like Germany) and dispensing authority to the hinterlands. Ours were individual states that yielded up authority to the central government.

Most governments of any great age had monarchies where the lord was displaced and a central government took over. We didn't. In fact, we tried to have an even more limited government than our current Constitution outlines, but it didn't work out.

[drmeow]

5. They are both undemocratic and increase corruption

Term limits basically tell voters that they can't vote for a candidate they want to vote for because of an arbitrary limit to how long they can have the job.

Also, being a good legislator takes time to learn - term limited legislators are more likely to blindly rely on lobbyists, many of whom take advantage of their naivety. It also takes time to build relationships (especially across the aisle).

Term limits combined with public financing of elections is actually the worst combination.

ALEC LOVES term limits!

https://www.asu.edu/copp/morrison/TermLimits.pdf

[Uncle Joe]

6. Thanks for the addition drmeow.

[loyalsister]

11. Republicans were behind the push for them in mo

And, as they hoped implementation initiated an ever growing republican super majority.

[IluvPitties]

7. Imagine Trump without term limits.

Exactly.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Bernie is speaking of Congressional term limits.

[IluvPitties]

9. Still, where does it end?

I don't like the precedent.

[JI7]

13. there are already no term limits for Congress

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

28. It would take a constitutional amendment to impose them.

In 1995, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton that states can't impose term limits on their federal representatives or Senators. Since the Constitution does not limit congressional terms, Congress can't do it either, so it would have to be amended.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Setting congressional term limits would be creating a new "precedent."

Presidential term limits have been in effect since 1947 after Democratic President FDR won four elections and would require a repeal of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, that's an exceptionally difficult task.

[dsc]

21. would we even have Trump if Obama could have run again?

[JI7]

12. term limits for Congress would make things worse

[Uncle Joe]

15. I agree JI7

[Kurt V.]

29. +1

[lapucelle]

17. Elections have consequences, and unfortunately Al Gore lost in 2000

largely due to third party spoiler Ralph Nader. It was President GW Bush who ushered in the Roberts court which in turn brought us the Citizens United decision and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

People were warned about third party protest votes that year and again in 2016. Those who didn't listen need to accept responsibility for the consequences their lapses in judgement set in motion.

Here's a question I would like to see posed at one of the debates:

"Why did Sanders abandon Al Gore in 2000 by endorsing Nader and by extension the victory of George Bush?"

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Sanders-abandon-Al-Gore-in-2000-by-endorsing-Nader-and-by-extension-the-victory-of-George-Bush

The fiery, independent from VT didn't endorse the Democratic nominee, an environmental activist and future Nobel Peace Prize winner, in the 2000 presidential election. We are all living with the concomitant consequences of other people's choices. That includes Citizens United.

[Uncle Joe]

18. Regarding choices

The fiery, independent from VT didn't endorse the Democratic nominee, an environmental activist and future Nobel Peace Prize winner, in the 2000 presidential election. We are all living with the concomitant consequences of other people's choices. That includes Citizens United.

Bill Clinton had a choice, more than one actually.

1. As the most powerful individual in the nation he didn't need to mess around with a 22 year old subordinate.

2. He didn't need to lie to the American People about it, he could have just came out and told the truth.

3. If Bill; honestly cared about his legacy, and democratic control of the Oval Office he didn't need to drag his Vice President out on the White House lawn on the eve of impeachment to fall on his sword knowing the whole time that it would cost Gore when the truth came out.

ttps://

Combine that with the corporate media conglomerates enimity for Al precisely because he was the preeminent political champion for opening the Internet to the people. They saw this as a direct threat to their bottom line and power of influence.

Of course in time the Internet became strong enough to help candidate Obama rise to the Presidency.

So the corporate media conglomerates treated Al as Zeus treated Prometheus only it was about the gift of mass two way communication and free dissemination of information without going through a conflict of interest corporate filter as opposed to fire, so it became easy for them to morph "I did not have sexual relations with that woman Monica Lewinsky" into "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet."

Without all that baggage and conflict of interest coverage dragging him, Al Gore would've won in a landslide regardless of political opposition.

[lapucelle]

19. Wait...what? You're blaming GW Bush on Bill Clinton's lying about an inappropriate affair

and the corporate media's prescient proactive bitterness concerning the impact that the internet might have on their profits a decade down the line?

Well I'll be sure to give all that the consideration it deserves.

Have a donut.

[Uncle Joe]

20. The corporate media conglomerates have spent billions of dollars since T.V's. inception in the 1950s

on human psychology and marketing.

It didn't a take genius to see that the Internet would in time pose a threat to their monopolistic domination on one way information, their bottom line and power of influence even in the 1990s..

(snip)

Former UCLA professor of information studies Philip E. Agre and journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in Wired News led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet", which followed this interview.[112][113][114][115] In addition, computer professionals and congressional colleagues argued in his defense. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that "we don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."[54][113] Cerf would later state: "Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit."[116] In a speech to the American Political Science Association, former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group"—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen."[117] Finally, Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: "I didn't ask him about the Internet. I asked him about the differences he had with Bill Bradley ... Honestly, at the time, when he said it, it didn't dawn on me that this was going to have the impact that it wound up having, because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative and creating the Internet to—I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it and it wound up being a devastating setback to him and it hurt him, as I'm sure he acknowledges to this very day."[118]

(snip)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore

You believe Bill Clinton's actions didn't have an adverse effect against Al Gore?

Have a donut.

[JI7]

23. so Sanders didn't support Gore becsuse of Clinton and Lewinsky?

[Uncle Joe]

24. I'm stating that every person needs to follow their conscious and it's too bad Bill Clinton didn't.

[JI7]

25. Clinton endorsed Gore

[Uncle Joe]

27. After the affair scandal and lying to the nation that endorsement became greatly diminished

in many parts of the nation.

The best thing that Bill Clinton ever did was choose Al Gore as his Vice-President but at the end he undermined it.

[JI7]

30. I had no trouble supporting Al Gore. Too bad Sanders couldn't do it

doesn't speak well of his judgment.

[dsc]

31. He is absolutely correct about how bad an idea term limits is

Voters aren't infants, they should be permitted to vote for candidates of their choosing.

[Mike Nelson]

35. I agree...

… if we get another FDR, we should be able to keep him - or her!