Ok I’m seeing some talk about term limits on the TL and I just want y’all to be very, very careful what you ask for. A thread:

First you have to remember that despite the common perceptions made by people and the media, being a policymaker is a grueling job, and it is a *ton* of work. It is a career, and you do need to be highly trained, highly adaptable, and have to rely on an incredibly loyal team.

The first concern when it comes to term limits is experience. There are a metric FUCKTON of different rules and loopholes and amendments everywhere you turn. Freshman/sophomore members often defer to senior members, and with term limits, it’ll be inexperience leading inexperience

and will fall victim to an onslaught of loopholes and petty attacks, among other things. With any job comes experience, and in Congress, that’s what the young members are there to do. You need time to learn the incredibly dense history and text that comes with the job,

as well as the ins and outs of how congress works internally, and how congress works with others. That way, a leader can be more effective. And you might be thinking “well, the leader may be effective, but what does it matter if they’re not listening to us?” We’ll get there.

Anyway, as our political system ages, it gets more and more complex. Young members are also severely targeted by lobbyists and other outside influences. And when you have a system where the freshmen automatically defer to tenure, and the tenure is gone, that will

not rid the system of this culture, and will instead continue to facilitate a congress that has even wilder levels of power – in the term limit case, it’s clout – over policy. So the question becomes do you want long-haul people who want established power or shorter bursts where

candidates have to stand out and get as much power in so little time? This will create an even wilder sensationalist landscape, and opens the door to lobbying. Younger members, as I said before, are prime targets for lobbyists. If you’re young and temporary, you’re easily swayed

and with little consequence – it also eliminates the incentive to actually learn about policy and proceedings of congress. If you’re not popular why does it matter? You’ll be out anyway. In addition, if you can’t make a career/get experience out of this and still want to

influence legislation, you turn right over to outside influences for work. That boosts outside influence (namely lobbying) by a LOT. And that can go lots of ways. This opens the door to *increased* corruption, and a revolving door that moves way faster.

In addition, this also removes people that are effective, and it limits the choices for who to vote for: if people really like a candidate and need them to continue their work (bc nothing gets done in a few terms), and they don’t have that choice, this further drives people away

from participating in the system. It’s hard enough to get working people to participate in elections, local and presidential, so when you have a continuous cycle of inexperience and sensationalist politics, it will drive people away.

Now, extreme upper limits are an area that I haven’t given much thought, to be completely honest. If we’re talking term limits after multiple decades, I’m uncertain as to where the constraints of the observed are outweighed by time in office/age/disconnect. It’s hard to say–

–and it will vary. I’m also inclined to believe that getting boomers out of office will wield more bipartisan results with millennials. But again, it varies greatly and when the incentive becomes power and not establishing yourself within the system (w/limits), it’s hard to say.

I do believe millennials run for office for better reasons and genuinely want change, but with how Congress has worked since, well ever, I have no basis to say for certain, and there aren’t enough tenured millennials for me to really draw a sound conclusion.

Instead, we should focus our efforts on gerrymandering, voter suppression, undoing the electoral college, and push for incentives to get a tired electorate voting regularly and involved at all levels, which are things that keep people like McConnell in office.

We need to change the voting system so that our elected officials can actually be held accountable by the people, and so that people feel empowered to continually voice their concerns. Speeding up the cycle has major unintended consequences, so please keep this in mind-

–when you see talk of term limits.

***i do have to clarify this thread is about congressional term limits only, should’ve done that in the first tweet sorry!***