Do we really have competitive congressional elections any more?
Currently 95-99% of all incumbents are re-elected every two years.
What are the reasons for this?
Immediately following their first successful election (primarily when running for an open seat) your freshman congressman is showered with attention and financial considerations from various special interests for their next re-election campaign in two years. It is virtually impossible for a challenger to raise even a fraction of the money as the incumbent and having the most money is almost always the major advantage in a political campaign.
A sitting member of Congress has a huge advantage in receiving earned media coverage. Their every vote and position is reported and their voice and face becomes saturated in the local media market.
Every ten years, during re-districting (also known as the incumbent protection process) the insiders insure that your congressman will almost always get re-elected following the gerrymandering procedure.
Yes...as you said, “We’ve always had term limits...its called voting” but how do you educate and inform the voters of the choices when you are at such a distinct disadvantage?
Don’t mean to be such a pessimist, but we can’t possibly be happy with the crop of congressmen that we have under the current operating system with almost guaranteed incumbency advantage.
At least with term limits we can reduce the amount time each of them spends at the public trough!
Nothing you mentioned would be corrected by term limits. It would continue to repeat on a short time interval. Until the electorate participates nothing will change. No amt of law can make this better but only much worse. Like I said, we have term limits now in voting. However, very few are engaged enough in that process.