Democrats accomplished a lot in 2021-2022 despite having razor thin, bare majorities. Not as much as in 2009-2010 when we had huge majorities, but a lot closer than you'd expect from that. The reason is because the party became far more ideologically coherent in the time since. If we had a 50 seat senate in 2009 we'd have struggled to even rename post offices.
Likewise, the dem house has been far more unified in opposing Trump than past house caucuses have been. This forces republicans to actually have their shit together before bringing any legislation to the floor. That ultimately won't stop them, but it will slow them down and result in them needing to leave things on the cutting room floor before the next congress is sworn in.
Better dems means we can do more with less and that republicans can do less.
I'm certainly not against primary challenges, but I'm not sure how much of that is a function of primary challenges vs. ideological realignments playing out. Our 2009 house thankfully had 40 votes to spare on any given vote, and you'll note that very little of the territory repped by our ~50 most conservative members is now repped by a Dem. I'm grateful we no longer have Lipinski to deal with, but Capuano was generally one of the better members of the caucus. And in 2009, even Lipinski was pretty close to median member of the caucus, while the likes of Allan Mollohan, Leonard Boswell, Larry Kissell, etc. were roughly the median members of the house.
If there was never any threat of primary challenges, ideological realignment would stagnate. If one can safely be in whatever party they are currently in for their own partisan benefit (eg a republican being elected in the south, or democrat in the northeast), why change parties? Even if the other party might make more ideological sense.
If they can credibly not even make it to the general election because of needing to survive a primary, that calculus changes.
Senators like Lieberman and Murkowski both won in the general despite losing their primaries, but I don't think it's an accident that after the fact they ended up unrepresentative of the rest of their respective caucuses. Other senators will see that and know that coming back from losing a primary is exceedingly not easy, and it would be best to skip that risk by adopting positions that align better with primary voters.
No primary challenges means less ideological shift over time.
As for Capuano, yeah he was good overall. I didn't have any complaints with him. But I suspect the people of that increasingly diverse district found real value in being represented by someone that is demographically more like them, even if the resultant ideological shift was minimal.
Congressional ideologies generally play catch-up with broader ideological realignment, not the other way around. We simply no longer live in a world where a true DINO will win re-election, without some help in the primary. And primaries serve as important safeguards against inappropriate behavior. Anyways, this got me curious, and I made an attempt at measuring the biggest shifts we've seen recently due to congressional electoral turnover.
In the past 20 years, we've seen 155 House Dems succeeded by another Dem: 126 due to retirement (3 succeeded by other incumbents), and 29 due to electoral loss (8 to other incumbents). Attempting to measure the shifts caused by these transitions, I assigned members percentile ranks based on their NOMINATE liberal-conservative score for the relevant congress. This of course is inexact and doesn't measure members' personal behavior or stances on particular issues or procedures and sometimes cannot properly assign the motivation for left-most members' votes, but it's the best we have IMO. Seats that shifted at least one third right or left within the caucus:
2006:
leftward:
-78%: Ed Case (-0.186, 94%) тЖТ Mazie Hirono (-0.521, 16%) (retired)
-48%: Jim Davis (-0.282, 81%) тЖТ Kathy Castor (-0.441, 34%) (retired)
rightward:
34%: Ted Strickland (-0.396, 47%) тЖТ Charlie Wilson (-0.272, 80%) (retired)
2008:
leftward:
-36%: Tom Allen (-0.359, 57%) тЖТ Chellie Pingree (-0.468, 21%) (retired)
-34%: Mark Udall (-0.243, 84%) тЖТ Jared Polis (-0.371, 50%) (retired)
I think it is useful for political parties to be ideologically coherent, which is the result of the "ideological realignment" mentioned. Having logical commonality on policy is kind of important for a political party to be capable of governing effectively and for voters to be able to make the easiest informed decisions.
OK, but groups want power to do something with that power, even if that something is prevent other people from using the power in ways they dislike.
But, since there is no commonality on policy, there is no agreement on what to do with the power. Or even what they want other people to not do with the power.
Gaining political power for groups that don't agree on politics is tautologically pointless.
People in MA can do whatever they want and I have no problem with primary challenges.
But it feels like navel gazing to me. What does it really matter that Neman beat Lipinski or Pressley beat Capuono?
It matters.
Democrats accomplished a lot in 2021-2022 despite having razor thin, bare majorities. Not as much as in 2009-2010 when we had huge majorities, but a lot closer than you'd expect from that. The reason is because the party became far more ideologically coherent in the time since. If we had a 50 seat senate in 2009 we'd have struggled to even rename post offices.
Likewise, the dem house has been far more unified in opposing Trump than past house caucuses have been. This forces republicans to actually have their shit together before bringing any legislation to the floor. That ultimately won't stop them, but it will slow them down and result in them needing to leave things on the cutting room floor before the next congress is sworn in.
Better dems means we can do more with less and that republicans can do less.
I'm certainly not against primary challenges, but I'm not sure how much of that is a function of primary challenges vs. ideological realignments playing out. Our 2009 house thankfully had 40 votes to spare on any given vote, and you'll note that very little of the territory repped by our ~50 most conservative members is now repped by a Dem. I'm grateful we no longer have Lipinski to deal with, but Capuano was generally one of the better members of the caucus. And in 2009, even Lipinski was pretty close to median member of the caucus, while the likes of Allan Mollohan, Leonard Boswell, Larry Kissell, etc. were roughly the median members of the house.
They go hand in hand.
If there was never any threat of primary challenges, ideological realignment would stagnate. If one can safely be in whatever party they are currently in for their own partisan benefit (eg a republican being elected in the south, or democrat in the northeast), why change parties? Even if the other party might make more ideological sense.
If they can credibly not even make it to the general election because of needing to survive a primary, that calculus changes.
Senators like Lieberman and Murkowski both won in the general despite losing their primaries, but I don't think it's an accident that after the fact they ended up unrepresentative of the rest of their respective caucuses. Other senators will see that and know that coming back from losing a primary is exceedingly not easy, and it would be best to skip that risk by adopting positions that align better with primary voters.
No primary challenges means less ideological shift over time.
As for Capuano, yeah he was good overall. I didn't have any complaints with him. But I suspect the people of that increasingly diverse district found real value in being represented by someone that is demographically more like them, even if the resultant ideological shift was minimal.
Congressional ideologies generally play catch-up with broader ideological realignment, not the other way around. We simply no longer live in a world where a true DINO will win re-election, without some help in the primary. And primaries serve as important safeguards against inappropriate behavior. Anyways, this got me curious, and I made an attempt at measuring the biggest shifts we've seen recently due to congressional electoral turnover.
In the past 20 years, we've seen 155 House Dems succeeded by another Dem: 126 due to retirement (3 succeeded by other incumbents), and 29 due to electoral loss (8 to other incumbents). Attempting to measure the shifts caused by these transitions, I assigned members percentile ranks based on their NOMINATE liberal-conservative score for the relevant congress. This of course is inexact and doesn't measure members' personal behavior or stances on particular issues or procedures and sometimes cannot properly assign the motivation for left-most members' votes, but it's the best we have IMO. Seats that shifted at least one third right or left within the caucus:
2006:
leftward:
-78%: Ed Case (-0.186, 94%) тЖТ Mazie Hirono (-0.521, 16%) (retired)
-48%: Jim Davis (-0.282, 81%) тЖТ Kathy Castor (-0.441, 34%) (retired)
rightward:
34%: Ted Strickland (-0.396, 47%) тЖТ Charlie Wilson (-0.272, 80%) (retired)
2008:
leftward:
-36%: Tom Allen (-0.359, 57%) тЖТ Chellie Pingree (-0.468, 21%) (retired)
-34%: Mark Udall (-0.243, 84%) тЖТ Jared Polis (-0.371, 50%) (retired)
rightward:
n/a
2010:
leftward:
-35%: Kendrick Meek (-0.328, 61%) тЖТ Frederica Wilson (-0.472, 26%) (retired)
rightward:
53%: Bill Delahunt (-0.492, 16%) тЖТ Bill Keating (-0.345, 69%) (retired)
2012:
leftward:
-45%: Tim Holden (-0.315, 77%) тЖТ Matt Cartwright (-0.434, 33%) (defeated)
-42%: Laura Richardson (-0.301, 79%) тЖТ Janice Hahn (inc, -0.424, 38%) (defeated)
rightward:
62%: Hansen Clarke (-0.469, 27%) тЖТ Gary Peters (inc, -0.226, 89%) (defeated)
60%: Mazie Hirono (-0.480, 24%) тЖТ Tulsi Gabbard (-0.271, 83%) (retired)
56%: Bob Filner (-0.752, 1%) тЖТ Juan Vargas (-0.383, 57%) (retired)
56%: Pete Stark (-0.587, 6%) тЖТ Eric Swalwell (-0.374, 61%) (defeated)
49%: Dennis Kucinich (-0.790, 1%) тЖТ Marcy Kaptur (inc, -0.403, 50%) (defeated)
2014:
leftward:
-56%: Gary Peters (-0.226, 89%) тЖТ Brenda Lawrence (-0.455, 33%) (retired)
rightward:
55%: Henry Waxman (-0.463, 21%) тЖТ Ted Lieu (-0.324, 76%) (retired)
2016:
leftward:
-54%: Janice Hahn (-0.342, 73%) тЖТ Nanette Barragan (-0.508, 18%) (retired)
rightward:
78%: Corrine Brown (-0.508, 11%) тЖТ Al Lawson (-0.254, 88%) (defeated)
61%: Sam Farr (-0.494, 16%) тЖТ Jimmy Pannetta (-0.307, 77%) (retired)
45%: Donna Edwards (-0.474, 26%) тЖТ Anthony Brown (-0.342, 70%) (retired)
41%: Steve Israel (-0.394, 54%) тЖТ Tom Suozzi (-0.200, 95%) (retired)
2018:
leftward:
-65%: Jared Polis (-0.270, 85%) тЖТ Joe Neguse (-0.466, 20%) (retired)
-50%: Gene Green (-0.388, 50%) тЖТ Sylvia Garcia (-0.726, 0%) (retired)
-47%: Niki Tsongas (-0.349, 66%) тЖТ Lori Trahan (-0.472, 19%) (retired)
-41%: Beto O'Rourke (-0.245, 90%) тЖТ Veronica Escobar (-0.387, 49%) (retired)
rightward (lol):
74%: Joe Crowley (-0.509, 18%) тЖТ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (-0.222, 91%) (defeated)
73%: Mike Capuano (-0.576, 9%) тЖТ Ayanna Pressley (-0.290, 82%) (defeated)
71%: Keith Ellison (-0.551, 13%) тЖТ Ilhan Omar (-0.278, 83%) (retired)
2020:
leftward:
-93%: Dan Lipinski (-0.146, 98%) тЖТ Marie Newman (-0.591, 5%) (defeated)
rightward:
89%: Lacy Clay (-0.586, 3%) тЖТ Cori Bush (-0.246, 92%) (defeated)
53%: Pete Visclosky (-0.453, 24%) тЖТ Frank Mrvan (-0.300, 77%) (retired)
40%: Joe Kennedy III (-0.444, 29%) тЖТ Jake Auchincloss (-0.323, 69%) (retired)
2022:
leftward:
-55%: John Yarmuth (-0.349, 64%) тЖТ Morgan McGarvey (-0.539, 10%) (retired)
-53%: Carolyn Bourdeaux (-0.303, 75%) тЖТ Lucy McBath (inc, -0.479, 22%) (defeated)
-50%: Val Demings (-0.241, 94%) тЖТ Maxwell Frost (-0.422, 44%) (retired)
-49%: Mike Doyle (-0.384, 51%) тЖТ Summer Lee (-0.739, 2%) (retired)
-47%: Peter Welch (-0.301, 76%) тЖТ Becca Balint (-0.452, 29%) (retired)
-39%: Albio Sires (-0.358, 60%) тЖТ Rob Menendez (-0.487, 21%) (retired)
-36%: Kai Kahele (-0.354, 63%) тЖТ Jill Tokuda (-0.464, 26%) (retired)
rightward:
69%: GK Butterfield (-0.483, 20%) тЖТ Don Davis (-0.259, 89%) (retired)
49%: Bobby Rush (-0.548, 8%) тЖТ Jonathan Jackson (-0.388, 57%) (retired)
49%: Jerry McNerney (-0.430, 35%) тЖТ Josh Harder (inc, -0.287, 83%) (retired)
2024 (very early, of course):
leftward:
-78%: Ruben Gallego (-0.300, 81%) тЖТ Yassamin Ansari (-0.678, 2%) (retired)
-43%: Derek Kilmer (-0.389, 56%) тЖТ Emily Randall (-0.593, 13%) (retired)
rightward:
40%: Jamaal Bowman (-0.739, 4%) тЖТ George Latimer (-0.493, 43%) (defeated)
39%: Andy Kim (-0.430, 42%) тЖТ Herb Conaway (-0.247, 80%) (retired)
36%: Katie Porter (-0.372, 59%) тЖТ Dave Min (-0.179, 95%) (retired)
34%: Lisa Blunt Rochester (-0.422, 44%) тЖТ Sarah McBride (-0.262, 78%) (retired)
Why is ideological realignment the goal?
I think it is useful for political parties to be ideologically coherent, which is the result of the "ideological realignment" mentioned. Having logical commonality on policy is kind of important for a political party to be capable of governing effectively and for voters to be able to make the easiest informed decisions.
How is it useful? You are arguing for polarization, which is generally seen as a bad thing.
I would answer that question with a question: What is the purpose of a political party if there is no policy commonality amongst its members?
Winning power. It's a two party system, which makes it a zero sum game. No voter is going to be 100% aligned with either party's platform.
OK, but groups want power to do something with that power, even if that something is prevent other people from using the power in ways they dislike.
But, since there is no commonality on policy, there is no agreement on what to do with the power. Or even what they want other people to not do with the power.
Gaining political power for groups that don't agree on politics is tautologically pointless.
There's never been "commonality on policy" in any political party in world history, that's how politics works.