Question - House Elections

We elect the House every 2 years so the entire House is always up for reelection????

Is that right?

each member runs every 2 years.

I guess I always knew the House ran every 2 years, but I just never connected that the WHOLE House was always up for reelection. That's really quite powerful for the people if we exercised it a little better.

there were actual contests in each district. A very small number, maybe 10%, have two viable candidates.

It's not much different than the Soviet Politburo.

because the way it works, the Senate is a lot more competitive than the House. House districts are typically designed to be as uniform as possible. You clump 900,000 partisan Democrats into one district, and 900,000 partisan Republicans into another, the result being that the Democrat gets elected no matter what in the first, and the Republican no matter what in the second. So nothing changes, unless there's a profound shift, in which case everything changes. Moreover, each Congressman is pretty much irrelevent on his own. With 435 members, and virtually no minority rights, if you manage to knock off one Republican, it typically doesn't make much of a difference unless it changes the control of the House. The House leadership controls everything - backbenchers are almost powerless.

That's true.

But still, the House should be alot more fluid than it is. And I think if you went in and joined various caucuses, then your voice would be heard more. Mostly I'm just saying that the implications of the WHOLE House being up for election every 2 years never really sunk into my head. It actually is possible to take back the House with a major movement in the country to do it. It would have to be a pretty major movement though.

They captured dozens of seats and unseated the incumbent Speaker from his own district. I think if the conditions are right - if people are dissatisfied with the House as an institution and see that as the fault of the entrenched majority, they will act.

There's really only so much time that you can hold onto something like that.

Especially in midterm elections. If you managed to get serious opposition turnout, some of these "safe" districts might not be so safe anymore.

You'd think being in congress would be such a great job but I guess being 1 out of 435 would make you feel pretty insignificant unless you had a committee chairmanship or a leadership position.

Until 1974, Congress was controlled by committee chairmen, selected on the basis of seniority. The South had only one political party, so once you were elected as a Democrat, you stayed elected until you died or retired. As a result, all of the most senior Congressmen were Southerners, and those old, white, far-right Dixiecrats controlled the committees.

Even the Speaker of the House was at the mercy of that cabal of old, white men. And if you weren't one of them, you had little power or hope of ever getting any.

The problem with the way the House works is that you have gerrymandering and partisan control. The framers of the constitution didn't intend to have either of these. There are house districts that are competative but between two Republicans and two Democrats which is useless since individual members don't mean anything. The only way to change the direction of the house is to change party control becuase that changes the control of the committees which are significantly more important in the house than they are in the senate.