Two key Senators who haven’t announced reelection plans leave questions about their future unanswered.
Good. She’s a traitor to her state and country. She doesn’t represent her constituents as she swore to.
The senate oath of office says nothing about representing your constituents.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
What do you think the duties of the office entail?
I looked, I could find nothing under ‘duties of senators’ that referenced ‘representing your constituents’. They don’t. They represent their states. There is another legislative body, the House of Representatives, that side represents people. It’s a fucked up system.
They are elected officials. They are meant to represent their constituents.
Ok. Meanwhile there is no oath that senators take that requires them to represent the people of their state. And further, as I pointed out, the senate does not represent people, it represents states. It was explicitly set up this way, and until 1913 senators were appointed by the states, not elected at all.
I literally posted the text of the oath they take. Their duties include representation of their constituents. The US is a representative democracy. Even when legislatures elected the Senate representatives, they legislatures were still elected. You’re revising the history of how our country was set up.
Please provide a link to the official duties of senators that includes ‘representing the people of their state’.
I agree that the US is generally a form of representative democracy, however the senate explicitly represents the states, not the people within the states, and always has. The fact that senators are equally allocated per state, rather than by population, with each state, regardless of population have the same number of senators does not support the theory that it is a representative democratic institution. The intention was explicitly to maintain the power of the individual states within a federation.
So in American politics, all that matters is how much money you can raise?
It’s not everything, but it’s like 70%
You’re just now noticing?
It matters a lot. It’s also something for the 24-hour news cycle to report on before/instead of polling
Not a whole lot different elsewhere in the world.
Turns out, selling out your constituency and betraying people who voted for you only has short term benefits.
If she hadn’t left the party, she could count on the party’s overwhelming support in the primaries, ostensibly because she’s the incumbent, but actually because any challenger would be more progressive than her.
Right, right. I can fix her.
The Republican party seems to have an ethos of “any win at any cost”, which has led us to Trump. It might sting in the short term to lose a senate seat, but benefit longer term to oust someone who does you no good anyway.
