Even Udall & Wyden? I understand the clean-house sentiment, but do you deny them credit?

I'm curious how Californians feel about Dianne Feinstein (Chair of the intelligence committee.) I'm not in CA; do people there plan to vote her back in when she's up for reelection or has the NSA scandal hurt her?

People in California, as everywhere, don't feel anything in particular about their representative.

The power of incumbency does not come from citizens believing their rep does a great job, it comes from money putting that rep in the public eye. People in general will vote for who is put in front of their face the most. "I've heard of this guy, never heard of that other guy so much, so this guy it is. Now home to the TV."

Idea: Perhaps election voting should be separated into different dates for different groups. I've certainly been guilty of knowing more about the president I was voting for than for congress persons (and even worse, state and local elections and bills). I've voted for people based on nothing more than the information on the ballot sheet. (Thankfully, I know better than to do that now.)

If people couldn't vote for lower offices simply because they showed up for presidential votes, but rather had to show up to vote on another date for other elections, then only people who actually cared about lower offices would vote for those. I think that might make it a lot harder to keep incumbents in power.

Actually I take that sort of thing as a sign of machine politics. When elections don't coincide with the ones that bring a lot of people into the booths, then the machine that's most effective at getting voters to the booths wins, unless the election becomes non-normal (e.g. a lot of people have a reason to get rid of someone, see below for two local examples).

Local elections, whenever they're held, are a real problem; unless I have real knowledge about a candidate I don't vote. My parents and I all pool our information together (e.g. my father knows which county commissioner is an idiot, and I, oh, research judges) and even then there are a lot of offices we don't vote on. And some run unopposed, e.g. our county clerk is very competent.

But that doesn't mean this is all a generally useless exercise, if an abusive public administrator, or a sheriff who doesn't play well with others is up for reelection, at least where I live they will be sent back home to spend more time with their families, or eventually to Federal prison in the case of the administrator.

This, I believe, is actually always the case. While swing voters decide a few elections, most elections are decided by how motivated each party's voters are to actually get to the polls.

A great quantitative example of this is in the (somewhat dry) "Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party" by Michael Holt. While it talks about a very different time, the demonstration that the party that got the most of its voters to vote always won was pretty convincing.

At the Federal level, California Senators have to be the absolutely worst case, post-12th Amendment. Largest state by population, 3rd in area after Alaska and Texas, most expensive statewide media market, etc. etc.

She effectively has a lifelong term.

I don't buy it. Obviously a Republican is not going to beat her in California, but someone with enough money and popular support could primary her.

And you don't even have to win -- just force her to stop being complacent and change her outrageous positions in order to mitigate the risk of losing.

A primary challenge is unlikely, since the person's career within the Democratic party would come to a swift end. Schwarznegger could possibly have beaten her, but a) he had a sleazy sex scandal and b) CA Republicans seem to dislike him even more than democrats because he has the temerity to take things like global warming seriously.

>A primary challenge is unlikely, since the person's career within the Democratic party would come to a swift end.

Not if they win.

And I don't see why you need a party insider in any event. What you need is someone who can fund their own primary campaign, or who can get enough donations from real people to do it, i.e. someone who is famous or rich or both.

>Schwarznegger could possibly have beaten her, but a) he had a sleazy sex scandal and b) CA Republicans seem to dislike him even more than democrats because he has the temerity to take things like global warming seriously.

Schwarzenneger could possibly have beaten her because he's rich and famous, but he's not the only one with those characteristics.

I always plan to vote against Dianne Feinstein. I just need someone to vote for that I hate less.

Ditto Barbara Boxer.

I've heard she won't seek reelection; I think that predated any of this. (I'm from California and couldn't bring myself to vote for her ever.)

She just got reelected in 2012 and will be 85 in 2018.