At the end of an elected officials term of office, they may or may not have the option to campaign for another term. If they chose to do so, they are now the incumbent in that election.
Voters now decide if they want to vote FOR or AGAINST the incumbent.
The only way to harm the incumbent is to actively vote for the opponent. A non-vote only helps the incumbent.
Why is this concept so hard for people to understand?
Sometimes turds smell the same regardless of the resume'.
Until things change dramatically my voting will be to vote out the incumbent, it don't matter who is running. Ya'll can call me a liberal if you want because it does mean that I will be casting a vote for a dem now and then, but I think they all need flushed. A vote for the incumbent is a stamp of approval for the behavior that put us in this situation, I do not approve of a single one of their actions. Until they get that they will not change. YMMV
hw, you may want to reconsider this view if your congresscritter consitently voted against more spending and more government. No congressperson can get SQUAT done by themselves. If you help vote in a big spend big government congresscritter just because they happened to be the incumbent while Oblamma was at the helm that can wipe out gains made in other jurisdictions and make the whole mess worse.
Why would you do that?
Mark,
I get where you are coming from, however, I do not know of a single member of congress that has consistently voted against big government/ big spending. Even Ron Paul, who many people hail as ultra conservative, is near the top of the heap in earmarks = part of the problem.
If we as a society could get together and send a message that we will not stand for the way our government has been ran into the ground, that we do not approve of the job that they are doing, and actually voted out the incumbent, the odds of having more big government types in congress is highly unlikely. A few election cycles of that and they may get the message.
However I am also a realist, and realize that this is not going to happen. Mostly because people are too caught up in partisan politics. People actually believe that their congressmen/women are doing a good job, when in reality they are all a joke.
In short, what we have been doing is obviously not working or we wouldn't have the problems we have. Time to get rid of the crooks, if that means throwing a few good ones out in the process, then so be it.