[Clubber]

>No amount of voting out the incumbents will change much --

The theory I have is it will, over time, destabilize all the back room deals and self preservation mechanisms currently in place built over decades of incumbency. I can't really think of another option.

>the parties significantly predetermine who you get to vote for in the first place, of course.

I agree. Having said that, there is nothing in the constitution that even mentions political parties, they were an invention to gain power during the Washington administration, and they are highly effective. Would it be any worse to elect some third party representatives just as a protest vote?

"I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating."

- Boss Tweed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell...

[nescioquid]

You are essentially saying that if only we voted less frequently, we'd somehow have more democracy and less corruption.

This would increase the influence of the two major parties even more (candidacies would be more rare, after all, so even more is at stake for each election). Why would extending a term suddenly make a politician less concerned about their own power and wealth and suddenly start actually doing things for their _constituents_?

I think the root of the problem is that somehow we ended up with a congress full of people whose last thought is for their actual constituents. There are a lot of insightful observations on how this came to be, but none of them point to term limits or length of terms as being the cause.

[Clubber]

>You are essentially saying that if only we voted less frequently, we'd somehow have more democracy and less corruption.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying we should vote out the incumbents until we have a government we are happy ruling us.

[nescioquid]

Fair enough -- terribly sorry to have conflated your argument as being tacitly in support of the idea of the article.

FWIW, I basically agree with voting out these present incumbents, except that I think the major parties are irredeemable, so what's the point? I'd love for an election to show everyone voting 3rd party and no one voting for the duopoly.