American Oligarchy
- You are a pawn in a rigged game of chess. American "elections" are a sham. Totally phony.
- The corrupt system is run by Billionaire Cartels out of Washington and works to automatically re-elect incumbents by flooding districts with mountains of outside cash. The people have no real voice in their own government.
- Every other democratic nation on earth has a multi-party legislature. But in the U.S. the same two parties "magically" win 100% of all Congressional elections.
Congress is wildly unpopular.
In fact, two-thirds of Americans want their own House member booted. And the tea party is dogging longtime Republican lawmakers.
So incumbents are sweating out this year's election, right?
Nope. Mostly they're not.
People talk about throwing the bums out, but voters keep sending the same bunch back in.
More than halfway through the party primaries, 293 House and Senate members have completed their quests for re-nomination.
The score: Incumbents 291, challengers 2 reports the Associated Press
Granted, one of those two losses was a shocker. A virtual unknown, Dave Brat, toppled House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia in a Republican primary.
Two longtime lawmakers - Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York - barely clung to nominations to their seats Tuesday.
But those rare exciting races that draw national attention are misleading. Most of the House candidates, about 60 percent so far, didn't have a soul running against them. Only a few faced a challenger who posed a real threat. No senator has been defeated yet.
Over the past five decades, voters have routinely returned 9 of 10 incumbent candidates to the House. Senate races are a bit less predictable, but usually more than 80 percent of incumbents win.
This year, Congress logged a confidence rating of 7 percent, the lowest Gallup has measured for any institution, ever. People don't put much attachment to their own representative anymore, either. An Associated Press-GfK poll last month found that 65 percent of Americans say their own House member should lose.
So why do these people keep winning?
It's harder for challengers to sell themselves to voters. Incumbents wield tremendous advantages. They raise big bucks from special interests, use their congressional offices to send voters mass mailings, build ties to businesses and advocacy groups in their districts, and benefit from name recognition. They have staff members back home working to keep constituents happy.