Should the Congressional midterm be abolished?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I've thought for some time that midterms for congress are, far from increasing the accountability of the legislative branch, becoming a fairly destructive event in American body politick. Here are some reasons why I feel the House should have four year terms, and the senate eight year terms (maybe with recalls allowed, especially for the Senate):

- the perpetual election cycle. This undoubtedly helps nerds like us on Atlas, but I think it weakens the legislature and increases the influences of special interests. Legislators are forced to spend the majority of their time fundraising, and as soon as they get elected they are required to start thinking about the election cycle that will start in a year.

- it detracts attention from state and local elections. For an ostensible federation, national politics has an inordinate level of influence downstream in the United States. Most state parties have little identies outside their federal identities, and state elections (outside of the outsize personalities that appear in governor's races sometimes) will often obey partisan gravity.

- they cause gridlock. In theory this should be good, as it will increase legislative power over the outsized executive power, but in practice this has only led to a hamstring and lame Congress that the executive branch happily usurps power from. The existence of the midterms at a state level seems like a better curtailing of presidential power, if POTUS is unpopular: he or she will have to deal with widespread attacks on his signature policies but in a manner that is relatively constructive (for example: state AG's suing the Obama admin were doing so in a sensible means, while the congressional GOP stonewalling everything under the sun and nearly triggering a default for no reason at all were ... less so).

[Xeuma]

Keep Senate elections the way they are, but have House terms be 4 years occurring on non-presidential years.

[RaphaelDLG]

Yes, strongly agree

[AudmanOut]

Hell no

[MarkD]

Hell no

[Antonio the Sixth]

Increase the President's term to 6 years and the House's term to 3 years (keep the Senators' term to 6 years but have it split in halves instead of thirds).

Of course, the most important thing of all would be to force the media to pay less attention to Presidential elections and more to Congressional ones, so as to equalize turnout between the two. The turnout drop in midterms is the main issue - although 2018 is a hopeful sign that things might be changing.

[Big Abraham]

Abolish presidential elections instead.

[136or142]

I've thought for some time that midterms for congress are, far from increasing the accountability of the legislative branch, becoming a fairly destructive event in American body politick. Here are some reasons why I feel the House should have four year terms, and the senate eight year terms (maybe with recalls allowed, especially for the Senate):

- the perpetual election cycle. This undoubtedly helps nerds like us on Atlas, but I think it weakens the legislature and increases the influences of special interests. Legislators are forced to spend the majority of their time fundraising, and as soon as they get elected they are required to start thinking about the election cycle that will start in a year.

- it detracts attention from state and local elections. For an ostensible federation, national politics has an inordinate level of influence downstream in the United States. Most state parties have little identies outside their federal identities, and state elections (outside of the outsize personalities that appear in governor's races sometimes) will often obey partisan gravity.

- they cause gridlock. In theory this should be good, as it will increase legislative power over the outsized executive power, but in practice this has only led to a hamstring and lame Congress that the executive branch happily usurps power from. The existence of the midterms at a state level seems like a better curtailing of presidential power, if POTUS is unpopular: he or she will have to deal with widespread attacks on his signature policies but in a manner that is relatively constructive (for example: state AG's suing the Obama admin were doing so in a sensible means, while the congressional GOP stonewalling everything under the sun and nearly triggering a default for no reason at all were ... less so).

There are other ways to address these things.  Campaign finance reform (though that also would take a constitutional amendment at this point) and ending (or time limiting) the filibuster for two things.

[Esteemed Jimmy]

No

[dw93]

No. The Trump Presidency is a perfect example of why we need midterms.

[Dukakisite1988]

I feel as though the Senate should always be up in full.

If an administration is unpopular then the voters can't necessarily give it sufficient punishment in the midterms (i.e. if the Senate majority of the administration's party is large enough from the previous cycle to make a turnover impossible).