The difficulty in writing a short work about a subject on which one has written at length is to decide what is essential and what merely interesting, to determine which familiar but complex concepts are intuitively know accurately by your audience and which are often misunderstood, to choose when familiar examples are needed to illustrate a process and when a generalized description will suffice, and, particularly when one is writing on a subject of contemporary saliency, to concentrate on themes that the reader can apply in the immediate context and into the future.
Reform is not easy; were it easy to right the problems with American system, someone would have done so long ago. Consequences of reform efforts are notoriously difficult to predict; passage of reform proposals are always difficult because of those with vested interests in the status quo.
Most citizens of democratic regimes evaluate other democracies according to the standard set by their own. But representative democracies come in many varieties. What is common across democratic systems is that citizens vote to choose who are to govern them. In some cases they choose executives, legislators, and judges; in others, only some of these. In some nations, voters choose national, regional, and local officeholders; in others, only some of those. What is critical is that citizens can evaluate the performance of those who make decisions that most directly affect their lives.
Separation of powers means that the executive, legislative, and judicial powers are housed in separate institutions. If an individual serves in the executive branch, he or she cannot serve in the legislative or on a court. At the level of the national government, two minor exceptions exist. The VP of the US serves as president of the Senate. The chief justice of the US presides over the Senate in the rare circumstance when the Senate is sitting in a court of impeachment for the president.
A system with separation of powers is distinguished from a parliamentary system, such as that of Great Britain, in which the PM is an elected member of Parliament chosen as leader by his fellow legislators.
Americans elect more than 500K public officials, more than is the case in any other democracy.
The so-called long ballot evolved in the 19th century as a way to extend democracy, but some claim that our system might have produced too much of a good thing.
Those running for less salient offices struggle to gain attention. One campaign technique is to bask in the glory of those above you on the ballot and hope that you can ride to office on their coattails; in 2004 many Republican candidates, sensing that President Bush was popular among their constituents, urged the president to visit their districts so that they could be seen as part of his entourage.
Rarely are the outcomes of elections near the bottom of long ballots determined by candidates’ views and records; factors that should be less significant according to democratic theory — name recognition, ethnicity, geographic proximity of the candidate’s home to the voter’s, and perhaps party affiliation — are often critical.
An additional consequence of the constitutional provisions that govern American elections, and which distinguish our system from many others, is that the terms of all offices in the US are set and fixed. Thus, no American government can fall because of failure to respond to a crisis. The electorate does not have the opportunity to express opinions until the expiration of a set term.
American governments cannot fall through votes of no confidence; elections cannot be timed to coincide with public opinion or world events.
But how was the president be chosen? By the state? Not if the views fo the states with large populations were to be heard. By popular vote? The “democrats” who wrote the Constitution were not that democratic; few were willing to entrust such an important decision to the masses.
But although the slaves counted to increase the slaveholding states’ representation in the House, they were not to be allowed to vote. That was the farthest thing from the minds of the founders from those states.
It is difficult to argue, however, that the Electoral College fostered democracy. It was a compromise crafted by a political elite to guarantee a desired result.
In a parallel manner, state legislator in closely divided states realized that if the size of the prize were enhanced — all of the state’s electoral votes as opposed to just the margin between those allotted to the winner and those allotted to the loser under another system — candidates would concentrate more on that state. Again, when one such state went to a winner-take-all system, other states were pressured to do the same.
Californians in 2004 had one electoral vote for each 664,700 voters; Mainers had one vote for each 329,300 voters. California’s total was 54 electoral votes, and Maine’s, 4.
21st-century congressional districts average nearly 700K residents. Whereas the founders’ vision was of homogeneous population in relatively small district represented by one of their own who knew their interests, many of today’s districts have extremely diverse populations — in racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious terms — with heterogeneous views on the issues of the day.
Of the 535 legislators in Congress in 2006, only Congressman Bernie Sanders and Senator Jim Jeffords, both from Vermont, were not either a D or a R; all fifty state governors ran with either a “D” or an “R” next to their name.
Nonpartisan elections are much more common at the municipal level, following the old adage that “there is neither a R or a D way to clean the streets.”
The discussion of the electoral context above says a good deal about why a two-party system has evolved in the US. First, the presidency is the big prize in the US. It is either won or lost. The winner-take-all nature of voting for the EC exacerbates this effect. A system characterized by separation of powers, in which the chief executive is chosen by a series of plurality-winner elections, does not allow for coalition government or electoral deal-making; therefore coalitions are formed before votes are cast in order to achieve majority status and win the presidency.
The two parties, while in office, have passed additional measures that go far toward ensuring their continued dominance. Most prominent among these is the system of campaign financing that put minor parties and their candidates at a significant disadvantage. In a similar vein, the debates during recent presidential campaigns have been administered by a bipartisan, not a nonpartisan, commission.
The American creed is laid out in the Declaration of Independence, which outlines the basic tenets of democracy, the “self evident truths” upon which democracy in the US is based and which have been continuously professed since the founding. The most basic truth is that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The purpose of the government is to secure those rights; and the power of the government depends on the consent of the people.
Yet it was Madison who urged Jefferson to join in organizing against the policies of Hamilton, Washington’s secretary of treasury, the reputed author of the Farewell Address. How ironic that these founders of the nation who feared factions, who argued against political parties, became the leaders of the first parties.
And therein was the debate. The parties that they formed were the parties of 18th-century Edmund Burke (“a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest”). The founding generation, as theorists, feared factions and the division in the nation that factions implied. The founding generation, later as those attempting to govern, found that parties were necessary to form the coalitions required to further their views fo the common good.
The contributions of these early years to nation building are truly astounding and the parties, reviled by the founders before they came to power, played a major role. First, a popular president, who could easily have been reelected as long as he wanted, voluntarily relinquished power in 1796. Then, after the election to succeed him, a candidate who opposed the policies of the president and was narrowly defeated agreed to serve as VP, because that was the constitutional stipulation in place at the time. Third, a party system formed through which national leaders were able to take their policy differences to the electorate, for the voters to decide. Of course, the electorate was minuscule in those days — and restricted to while males and in many states property owners.
The first party period in American history ended with the disappearance of the Federalists. Today Americans would be amazed if a major party were to vanish, but remember, these were fragile and immature parties. Citizens had not had time to develop loyalty to a party as an institution — their loyalty was to the leaders. The political elite were not divided on every issue. Legislators’ loyalties were more to region than to party. Jefferson as president used to hold carefully orchestrated dinner parties in order to cajole congressmen to support his views. When Federalist leaders failed to respond to popular dissatisfaction with their views, there was no ingrained party organization to uphold the party. The leaders retired back to their homes, and the party disappeared.
Party labels and loyalties remained volatile during this period. The election was based on personality more than issues.
The great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country… You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
Nixon followed a southern strategy of appealing to voters whose loyalty to the Democratic party was based more on tradition than on policy preferences.
The Vietnam War also brought traditional party loyalties into question. Much of the opposition to that war came from Democrats; many traditional blue-collar Democrats felt that opposing a war while troops were in harm’s way was unpatriotic; they move to the Republican party in protest. Others left the Democrats because they felt the party had become isolationist, not willing to stand up to the rest of the world.
During the 1972 presidential campaign, the Democrats were dubbed the party of “amnesty [for draft evaders], acid, and abortion.”
The choices this year are… between two fundamentally different ways of governing — their government of pessimism, fear, and limits, or ours of hope, confidence, and growth.
Social issues divide the electorate in one way; economic issues, another; international issues, in perhaps a third. Which party citizens decide to support depends on which issue is most important to them, or which issue is articulated in a way that appeals to more voters. Politicians, seeing this, emphasize extreme positions on wedge issues that further divide the country.
Politicians learned to use inflammatory rhetoric to excite the voters; parties ran torchlight parades to stoke the competitive fires of their followers. Getting our the vote meant getting the common man to the polls, and then, as now, the average voter was not stirred by philosophical debates; the spoils system, with the spoils in terms of postelection employment going to supporters of the winning candidate, and the excitement of campaign events were the stuff of politics at mid-century.
Party workers and voters loyalty to the machine was cemented by material incentives, tangible rewards that were given when elections were won and, by implication, would be removed if the elections were lost. Party workers often held lucrative patronage jobs — and they worked hard for the machine to keep these jobs.
The party machines that dominated urban areas at the end of the 19th century were parties of patronage, not principle. Their job was to win elections; they recruited candidates for local office, but they cared more about the jobs those officials could hand out than the policies they passed. Most patronage jobs were controlled by local or county government.
At the state level, party machines, particularly Republican party machines, were run differently. In those cases the fuel was money, provided by business interests, more than jobs and aid for new voters. State machines were often run by US senators, because at this time US senators were chosen by state legislatures. The business interest supported the boss, who was elected by the state legislature and went to Washington to protect the interests of those who supported his organization. The fuel that ran the machine was different, but the material nature of the incentives for loyalty was the same.
One important mechanism of party control was control over the nominating process. Party bosses decided who the nominees would be. They then printed and distributed the ballots, so that they controlled the fate of those nominees. The workings of the parties were out of sight and well beyond the control of the average citizen.
The invention and then speared of the direct primary election took control of nominations out of the hands of party leaders. The civil service system removed many patronage jobs from party control. The 17th Amendment, passed in 1913, required direct election of US senators, taking one of the last powers away from state party machines. Welfare reforms passed as part of the New Deal meant that the federal government, not the parties, were the source of aid for needy citizens — and loyalty was transferred accordingly.
If parties as campaign organizations were on the wane, parties as a means to organize the government and as a symbol to which citizens showed loyalty remained strong. In the early 20th century both parties, in both houses of Congress, began to elect formal leaders, whether the party held majority or minority status. Party members in legislature were expected to follow their leaders.
The first step was removal of the property-owning requirement, which was eliminated on a state-by-state basis, usually to be replaced with a requirement that voters be taxpayers. The taxpayer requirement persisted, in the form of a poll tax, a tax levied as a citizen exercised the right to vote, until it too was eliminated.
Next came the extension of suffrage to blacks, a process that took more than a century to complete. After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment stated that no citizen could be denied the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” However, legislatures in former slaveholding states adopted ingenious means of keeping the newly enfranchised former slaves from voting. The so-called Jim Crow laws included literacy tests, tests on interpreting the Constitution, “white only” primaries (that defined the parties as private associations open only to whites), residency requirements, and poll taxes. Southern communities often placed voting booths far from areas in which former slaves resided and opened them only for limited hours. These legal restrictions were supplemented with illegal means — intimidation and physical abuse.
In the early days of the republic, only about 1 in 30 could vote; politics was an avocation of the elite. There was little need to consider the views of the average man.
When women received the right to vote, on a state-by-state basis near the end of the 19th century and nationally in 1920, the eligible electorate doubled. Those in power — party leaders, union leaders, the liquor industry, the Catholic Church, business leaders — all opposed women voting, because they feared that policies on which their power depended on would be reversed overnight. That did not happen, but the nature of politics did change, with parties adopting platform planks appealing to women. But, by and large, women’s voting behavior did not differ significantly from that of men.
Young voters participate at much lower rate than their older peers; they do not differ significantly in how they vote from older voters with similar racial, social, and economic backgrounds.
At the time of the founding, the president, senators, and most governors were elected with little or no popular participation.
Whereas once only national campaigns or the most expensive stateside campaigns could afford public opinion polling, and a benchmark poll at the beginning of a campaign and one or two subsequent polls was considered state-of-the-art research, now national and even statewide campaigns poll continuously.
In politics honesty doesn’t matter, efficiency doesn’t matter, progressive vision doesn’t matter. What does matter is the chance for a better job, a better price of wheat, better business conditions.
The story of the demise of the machine is a complex one — involving democratic reformers, the government assuming many of the responsibilities for social welfare that parties once performed, exposure of corruption, and other factors that varied by the locale. By the last quarter of the 20th century only the palest shadows of these once powerful organizations remained.
Whereas once party organization built from the most local level, through counties and states to the national level, today the power in the organization flows largely from the national level down. Whereas once parties controlled the nominating process and candidates were creatures of the parties, today candidates establish their own organizations to run in primaries and the political party organizations exist largely to serve the needs of those candidates who are nominated or who, once elected, are seeking reelection. Whereas once the work of parties depended on personal connections and personal contact with the voters, today the work of political parties focuses on providing money and the means for electronic communications.
American political parties do not resemble the programmatic parties typically found in Western democracies. The party organization and their leaders play virtually no role in shaping policy agendas. In fact, one could argue that American parties, for at least the last half century, have been in search of a role.
One of the most important functions of the national committee staffs is to monitor how campaigns are running throughout the nation, which campaigns are clearly won and which lost, which are hotly contested, which candidates need financial help, and the like. Then they funnel resources accordingly.
In part the decline of parties can be traced to losing control of the nominating process as a result of direct primary elections.
In 21st century politics, however, the key to winning elections is often in finding a strong candidate to run. Many incumbents win reelection because their opponents are either weak or nonexistent. A key role for parties today is to recruit strong candidates to run in open seats and to oppose incumbents in the other party.
Candidate recruitment has become the most important job for party leaders.
Party committees and leaders might be restricted in how much they can contribute to any one race, but they are not restricted in the ways in which they can assist candidates in networking — and that may well be their most valuable contribution.
American political parties have alway been decentralized organizations; they begin at the grassroots and build to the national level. Party committees are chosen at the precinct or town level; these committee members choose committee members for the next larger unit of governing. The formal structure now differs little from that established more than 150 years ago.
The key question has always evolved around the locus of power. In the days of the powerful boss, the power rested with the public official who controlled jobs — often the mayor or county executive, always someone whose tenure in office depended on the party boss. In some states, US senators held the power, but more often a series of local leaders were clearly the most powerful. National party leaders were always seen as weak, with few resources and little influence. Their job was often to broker agreements among the powerful, and autonomous, local and state leaders.
Today power, to the extent that party power exists, stems from control over money. Most of the money to run party organizations is raised at the national level. State leaders and to an even greater extent local leaders are dependent on the expertise and often largesse of national leaders.
Formal party organization does not define party positions. The leaders of the party organization are not able to discipline public officials elected under the party label. Rather, the strength of the party is directly related to its ability to assist in campaign functions. The current situation is a far cry from the role played by party organization a century ago, reflecting important changes in the critical aspects of the electoral process — the stakes of the game, the incentives for participation, and the means used to reach voters.
What does it mean to be a D or a R? We know that party membership in the US does not mean what it does in Europe. That is, Americans do not join a political party in any real sense; parties do not maintain membership rolls. We also know that party allegiance is the single best predictor of a citizen’s vote.
Democrats did their best to repel Northern white ethnic voters. Big-city liberals launched crusades against police brutality, portraying working-class cops as thuggish storm troopers for the establishment. In the media, educated liberals portrayed urban ethnics as uncultured, uneducated Archie Bunkers. The liberals were doves; the ethnics were hawks. The liberals had “Question Authority” bumper stickers; the ethnics had been taught in school to respect authority. The liberals thought an unjust society caused poverty; the ethnics believed in working their way out of poverty.
Nearly two-thirds of all D are women; here we see much-discussed gender gap as less than half of the R are female.
Blacks account for about 30% of all D, but only 1% of R.
Party activists tend to find themselves at the extremes, and rank-and-file party identifiers tend to occupy position closer to the center. The more active on is in the party, the more likely one is to hold extreme positions, particularly on the most salient issues of the day.
The more one party dominates a geographic area, the more valuable the nomination is and the more potential candidates will appeal to the party base, not to the center. As a result, officeholders from one-party areas tend to be more partisan and extreme on controversial issues than are those from more competitive areas.
Party organization in the golden era of parties, a century ago, was concerned with gaining power and the spoils that went with that power. Party leaders were often towering political figures. Those who worked under them were bound to them and to the organization because of the patronage they controlled. Local politics was more important than state or national politics, because more patronage was controlled at the local level. Party positions were decidedly secondary.
In the 21st century, party leaders are largely unknown except for by other activists in their local area, they still perform the traditional party functions, but their motivation for supporting the party is because of policy preferences, not because of potential patronage. Party positions are not valued for personal gain. As a result, those who care most about policy are able to capture party posts and dominate the organizations.
Finally, a large group are uninterested in politics or government policy and do not identify with either party because they are not concerned enough to follow the discussions. Thus, some of the independents are among the most informed and most concerned of citizens; others are among the least informed and least concerned.
First, the system was terribly flawed. A country that views itself as a beacon of democracy, a model for nations emerging as democracies, could not be proud of an electoral system that left the result in doubt for weeks, with the clear implication that the winner would be determined based on judicial interpretations of questionable ballots.
Second, few people truly understood the system.
Again, which system is to be preferred? Which is “fairer” or “better” is not clear. A system of proportional representation allows the district or state delegation to the national convention to reflect the voting preferences of those who cast primary votes more precisely. That certainly is a valid goal for a voting system. But a winner-take-all system allows a front-running candidate to cement a lead more quickly, to unify the party behind his or her candidacy, and perhaps to have an advantage going into the general election. That too is a valid goal for a primary voting system.
Caucuses are essentially meetings of party members, people who are enrolled in one party or the other. In caucus states, party members throughout the states gather in their home locales on the same day. At these local caucuses, representatives of the various contending candidates make the best case they can, and then those assembled discuss the campaign and the strengths and weaknesses of the contenders and vote openly for their choice.
Finally, because the process is so condensed, because candidates are not tested over an extended period of time on a range of issues, and because most of this occurs well in advance of the time when the average citizen is thinking about presidential politics, citizens are often dissatisfied with one or both of the major party nominees by the time the fall general election campaign begins.
The direct election of the president most closely resembles the democratic ideal. Whoever receives the most votes wins the election. Just like in most other elections in this country. That sounds simple enough.
But what if 3 or 4 major candidates were running for president? Some claim that the EC system, with its winner-take-all feature, discourages serious third parties from forming. Should someone be elected president with only 30 or 35 percent of the vote? Would it be wise to have a system in which a president is elected with far more than a majority voting against him or her?
Minority voters are adamantly opposed to reform of the EC system. African Americans and Hispanics each make up approximately 10% of the American electorate, but those citizens are not spread evenly throughout the nation. While a 10% voting bloc might not get much attention in a national election, if it concentrated in certain important areas, where it can make the difference between winning or losing, that influence is enhanced.
Finally, some small states would resist change. One the one hand, one could argue that small states have so few electoral votes that no one cares about them. But, on the other hand, closely contested small states in close elections receive much more attention than they otherwise would. Their representatives want to keep the small advantage that they have.
Americans who lived in the battleground states in 2000 and 2004 were overwhelmed by visits to their states by the presidential candidates, their running mates, their wives, and other surrogates. Americans living in the other 35 states rarely had campaign visits. TV viewers in the battleground states could hardly turn on their sets without seeing campaign ads.
It is equally clear that a system with direct election of the president would favor citizens in larger cities — and such a system would also favor citizens in a state that leaned in the direction of an incumbent’s party, because he would curry favor in order to improve turnout. In politics, where one stands on a policy controversy is often determined by where one sits. If the 2000 result did not lead to EC reform, it is unlikely that any change is on the horizon.
A number of lessons were quickly learned — or perhaps relearned for those who have followed campaign finance reform for sometime. First, those seeking to influence the political process through spending money will find a way to do so. Political activists found a loophole in the IRS code that allowed them to spend huge sums of money to influence the election.
The nominees of the parties will be chosen through a process that confuses most of the electorate at a time when few citizens are focusing on presidential politics. The timing of the process will be such to guarantee that some states, notably Iowa and New Hampshire, will have influence far disproportional to either the size of their populations or the extent to which those populations are representative of the nation as a whole.
The ability to govern will be much less important than will be other factors such as the ability to appeal to the electorate on tV or the extent to which the candidate finds the correct nuance in expressing his or her position on controversial and salient issues, a subset often different from issues vital to the national interest. We can also be quite certain that the nominees will be exposed to relentless attacks based on their records in office, their public statements, and perhaps their personal lives and those of their families — and that in at least some cases, these attacks will be unfair, irrelevant, and still decisive.
Few Americans know how little electoral competition exists in their vaunted democracy.
One has to go back more than a decade to find an election in which fewer than 98% of the House incumbents seeking reelection have done so successfully.
As a general rule, nominations and elections for state governor and US senator are more competitive than those for the House; contest for state legislature and local office, less competitive. The general principles are that the more the nomination is worth (in terms of likelihood of subsequent election), the more it is likely to be contested or even hotly contested, and the more influence that an office has, and the less dominated by one party a district is, the more likely one is to find competition in the general election.
Nowhere in the US does the term “party member,” as used for the purposes of determining who may vote, refer to formal, dues-paying members. That concept of choosing to be a member of a party is alien to most Americans.
Party history in the various states has varied tremendously; that is why some states have closed party systems and some are more open. Similarly, the historical strength of party organizations in various states has determined the modern role that they play in the nominating process.
70% of all incumbents running for reelection to the House have been renominated without opposition in recent years. Very few of the others have faced serious challenges.
While it is important to understand the nominating process and how variations in the process lead to different results, it is also important not to lose the forest for the trees. Except for nominations for open seats — for important offices in a party whose candidates have a legitimate chance of winning — very few primaries in the US are hotly contested. In most cases only one candidate seeks a party’s nomination for an office.
Potentially strong candidate who might be interested in running for the House typically wait for a seat to become open before they enter a race. As a result, incumbents face weaker candidates who do not have the ability to raise money and thus cannot carry their message to the electorate.
Democratic theorist agree on basic tenets of fair and effective elections — that opposition parties can challenge those in power, that candidates have the right freely to express their views, that a free press can report on the electoral process, that citizens have to right to vote in secret and without fear, and that voters have access to information needed to cast their votes in an informed manner.
Less agreement exists on how much information is necessary for the electoral process to server a democracy adequately. Must the electorate be truly informed, know the details of policy alternatives and the candidates’ views on those alternatives, in order to vote rationally? Or is it adequate for voters simply to know if they feel comfortable with those in power, in the terms of the question posed so cogently by then-candidate Ronald Reagan in his debate with Jimmy Carter, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Candidates avoid substance at any cost, because every stand that one takes on a controversial issue makes as many enemies as it does friends. The most effective techniques developed by political consultants involve negative campaigning: control of the agenda by focusing on issues or personal matters that are difficult for your opponent.
The coverage of local campaigns, even the most competitive ones, is often so slight as to be meaningless.
The candidate campaigns and the media do not deserve all of the blame for this circumstance. Nor do the citizens, although clearly citizen involvement could be much higher. Citizens are asked to focus on a large number of campaigns at one time. They are busy with their everyday lives; politics, in general, is not central to their existence. And perhaps most important, they do not often see how their lives will be impacted by the election of one person or another, certainly not a congressman or a state legislator. So they pay scant attention to campaigns, focus on them only at the last minute, vote for party or for candidate with whom they are familiar, or for those who seem to have or seem not to have improved their sense of well-being.
If none of the participants is to blame for the lack of substance in American campaigns, where does the blame lie? In part, it is inherent in the system. The American system, with single-member districts, weak parties, separated governmental institutions, and a strong federal system, leads almost inevitably to campaigns based on image and not substance. Citizens can know their representatives, but they cannot hold them accountable, because power is dispersed. Parties can take stands on issues, but individual candidates can ignore those positions at their will, because it is their constituents, not national or even state party leaders, who control their destinies.
The concern is not just that Americans vote in lower numbers than do citizens of other democracies. The more serious problem is that those who do vote differ from those who do not in systematic ways. African Americans and Hispanics vote in lower numbers than do Caucasians. Poor people vote in lower numbers than do rich people. Less educated people vote in lower numbers than do those with more education. The chorus of the electorate, in short, sings with a distinctively privileged voice.
Americans are asked to go to the polls more often than citizens of other nations. As a result, Americans suffer from voting fatigue. Should all elections within the country be held at one time, once a year?
In the 2000 presidential election, the citizens of the US were faced with a choice between two candidates they did not much like.
The skill sets needed to be a successful president — the ability to work with leaders of both parties, familiarity with world events and the capacity to negotiate with world leaders, a vision of the country’s future and of a path to reach that vision, the experience to administer a huge bureaucracy effectively without becoming bogged down in details, the gift to speak to the nation and for the nation with equal effectiveness — are qualities that are best judged by peers, not by mass audiences in an election. But in the American political system, professional peers have little to say about who is nominated and less about who is elected.
In the 2004 elections for the US House of Representatives, incumbents seeking election outspent their challengers, on the average, by 16 to 1 ($800k to $50k).
Incumbents have enormous advantages in terms of name recognition, the ability to serve their constituents and to reinforce positive images, experience in campaigning, and ease of fund-raising.
Citizens who are determined to know the details of a candidate’s record and platform can find that information. However, it requires significant effort, going to a website and searching for the information, steps not likely to be taken by the average voter. The mass media provide very little of this information because they have neither the resources nor the financial incentives to do so.
Even if they did, the networks, the local stations, and local newspapers cannot cover all of the campaigns.
All of these flaws with the system have been noted and addressed by reformers. But solutions are not easy to come by, even if one has the will to do so. It is much easier to point to flaws in a system than to propose solution that will address those flaws without creating new ones. And in this system, changing the rules of the game requires the consent of those who have attained office under the rules currently in place.