Cats and Politicians Always Say Meow, Never You-Ow or We-Ow.
Think about that.
Don’t rage or complain, we have enough online complaints to last us several generations, and they go nowhere, serve nothing except to blow off steam.
We have mid-term elections coming in November, when the entire House of Representatives, and one third of the Seante will come up for re-election.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that, statistically, 95% of those facing election will be re-elected no matter how unpopular.
Let me explain how, in politics, meow has come to rule.
It didn’t ‘just happen.’ It’s the cumulative effect of several structural advantages that heavily favor incumbents, regardless of broad voter dissatisfaction. Most House seats are drawn to be safely Democratic or Republican. We call that gerrymandering, and it happens in favor of either party that controls state legislators. So, that means the real contest isn’t the general election, it’s the primary. Once a candidate wins that, reelection is largely automatic.
Then, there’s the incumbency advantage. Sitting members of Congress have built-in visibility, staff, constituent services, media access, and cash superiority. Voters may dislike their Congressperson in the abstract, but piles of cash are important, and incumbents raise far more campaign funds. Donors back likely winners, which reinforces the cycle. Challengers often can’t afford enough exposure to compete seriously. Voters these days are now strongly aligned with party identity, and many voters simply pull the party handle regardless of who the candidate is.
Then there’s the tools available, like franking (free official mail), and constant visibility in the district, due to free flights back and forth from Washington that reinforce a sense of personal connection.
Bottom line: As George Carlin quite accurately put it, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
The 95% reelection rate isn’t proof voters love incumbents, it’s simply evidence that most elections are effectively decided before voters get anywhere near a ballot box.
Beyond that (as if it wasn’t enough), there’s the perks.
Who would possibly spend $millions to nail down a job that pays less that 200 grand a year? How does the Congress love thee? Let me count the ways.
Generous federal pensions, $17 to $60 thousand, beginning after as little as 5 years of service. I don’t know what you-ow get in Social Security, but me-ow banks about 21 grand, after a lifetime of work. But hang on.
While they continue to threaten Social Security and cut taxes for the rich by hammering you-ow’s access to the most expensive health care in the world, their’s is a gold-level employer-sponsored ACA plan with a strong subsidy and convenient in-house care.
The real difference isn’t the plan itself, it’s the security, subsidy, and continuity, which most Americans don’t have.
Then there’s their Thrift Savings Plan, a government 401k with matching funds, book deals, speaking fees, and future lobbying/consulting opportunities, once out of office. What that really means is seats on boards of directors that typically pay a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, because they bought themselves (the companies) a direct pipeline to the House or Senate by that membership.
They get large taxpayer-funded office budgets (House: $1–2million; Senate: several million depending on state size), teams of staff in Washington and their home districts, as well as the ability to hire specialists in any damn subject they deem necessary.
Oh, and free flights home every week (generally on Thursday afternoon, returning on Monday late). You-ow and me-ow work a 40-hour week, if we-ow are lucky, and commute an hour a day.
Bottom line: None of these perks alone guarantee reelection—but together they create a powerful ecosystem that makes incumbents far harder to dislodge than any challenger.
Last, but certainly not anywhere near least, we come to pay-for-votes.
We have no bribery or fraud in American government because Congress, backed by the Supreme Court, made it legal. This wonderous achievement had its origin in a 2010 Supreme Court ruling called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, further tilted political influence toward wealthy donors and corporations.
It took the case in 2007, when a conservative nonprofit organization challenged campaign finance rules that stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The Court decided 5–4 that Citizens United was within its First Amendment rights to spend its money disseminating the film.
But rather than finding solely on the case before it as it had been asked to do, the Court took the opportunity to entirely strike down century-old prohibitions on corporate “independent” spending — money that doesn’t go directly to a candidate or party.
This applied to labor unions as well. Lower courts applying the ruling extended it to invalidate almost all fundraising and spending restrictions for groups that purport to be separate from candidates, many of which are today known as “super PACs.”
This ruling doubled down on a 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which was the first case to say that campaign expenditures, or money spent to influence voters, was a type of “speech” and that the only permissible justification for most limits on money in politics was to prevent outright bribery, or as the Court’s opinion called it, “quid pro quo corruption.”
Thus, the United States Congress was bought and paid for, allowing all of us free speech, but awarding the largest megaphone to corporations.
So, we don’t have that particular problem with fraud and bribery, although it’s rampant in what our president continues to call ‘shithole countries.’
As Mark Twain declared over a hundred years ago, “It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.”
And I don’t want you to rant about all this, because ranting solves nothing. It’s the cats meow.
But, I dearly want you to think…and think hard, about you-ow and we-ow…and why so many problems come from meow.