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Comment by ColinDabritz | Hacker News Reader

They absolutely care if you call, if you show up to town hall meetings. It matters. They are elected officials, and they do ultimately care and worry that if they do unpopular things they will not get re-elected.

There is an excellent write up of how this works and why it works from a former congressional aide: https://qz.com/836737/fomer-congressional-staffer-twitter-ti...

Take action!

Write your senators numbers on a note by your desk, put them in your phone as contacts. Add your house representatives as well. When you hear about an important issue, make a quick call. Ask them to represent you on upcoming issues. Thank them for their position on issues you support, let them know you are disappointed in them for things you oppose.

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> if they do unpopular things they will not get re-elected.

An incumbent has over a 90% chance of being reelected until they decide not to run anymore. They literally do not need to care after they've told whatever lies they needed to tell to get elected the first time.

Yes - but is that because they respond to calls from people who wouldn't vote for them next time?

That is to say - may it's that high because they respond to people who call in.

This is an easy one. No it's not

> An incumbent has over a 90% chance...

You're assuming that public officials are automata that don't suffer from risk aversion, don't need to raise money in close races, and don't change their behaviour based on whether they have public opinion behind them. I wouldn't bet on that being true.

They can read. They can see that they have a 90% reelection chance with their peers as a group having disgustingly low approval ratings. They can see that they still don't have problems raising money with those low approval ratings.

They do not need to care about you.

Talking about Feinstein in particular -

* January 17, 2011 Approval rating measured at 43%

* May 12, 2011, Feinstein co-sponsored PIPA

* PIPA gets mass blow back

* 2012 Reelected

* 2013 moves to continue mass survailance

* After the 2016 FBI–Apple encryption dispute, Feinstein, along with Richard Burr, sponsored a bill that would be likely to criminalize all forms of strong encryption

* 2016 Reelected

She knows she doesn't need to give a damn about your issues with mass surveillance.

It's incredibly easy to be this casually cynical, but reality doesn't match this simple worldview.

When you start to meet people in positions of power you realise that they're not a bunch of sleazy villains, they're complicated people who (for the most part) think they're doing the right thing in a difficult and often contradictory environment.

You maybe right, but I have a hard time understanding how people can believe they are doing the "right thing", while trampling on their own citizens' privacy and basic rights.

I can understand if it is a super complicated trade treaty, but something straightforward like "don't spy on your people, that too with not much oversight etc" - is that too hard to understand?

> I have a hard time understanding... trampling on their own citizens' privacy and basic rights

Confirmation bias goes a long long way.

Take gerrymandering, which is as undemocratic is it gets. If you already believed yourself to be one of the 'good guys', it wouldn't be hard to convince yourself that gerrymandering (as a tool of last resort) is an acceptable way to hold at bay the forces of moral degeneracy... especially when other 'good guys' tell you its okay, and you can find some character flaw or weakness in your opponent that you can use to licence your own.

Confirmation bias is well documented, but check out Daniel Effron's work on 'moral licencing'. He showed that people tend to horse-trade ethics, excusing biased or self-serving behaviour with the points scored from virtuous behaviour... one example being an experiment where the subjects exhibited increased racial bias when they'd previously been given an opportunity to state that they'd voted for Obama.

That's why representative democracy is a broken and inefficient system that can be easily rigged (gerrymandering, poor turnout, bought politicians, media ignoring a candidate, media covering a candidate nonstop, broken promises, pulling a fast one etc.)

With today's advances in statistics and technology, people could be polled for their opinions on issues by hundreds of independent and transparent public polling companies. Just like jury duty but easier and on your phone. You can't buy all the people all the time. It's too expensive. But you can perpetuate the system that engulfs their representatives all of the time.

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212

  2016 Reelected

No, she wasn't on the ballot.

You should tell that to all the moderate republican incumbents that lost their jobs to the Tea Party drones in 2010. Overnight, the party transformed from far-right conservative, to bonkers-cut-off-nose-to-spite-your-face lunacy.

California is effectively a single-party state, Feinstein (and whoever replaces her) is secure enough in her position to not care about most of her constituents.

California may be a single-party state, but she can still be deposed in a primary. And if she's any good at surviving as a politician, that is the prospect that terrifies her.

This mechanism - calling your congressperson, threats to replace them in the next primaries, showing up to townhalls, etc, is precisely how the Tea Party seized power. The republicans they didn't replace fell in line with their agenda.

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/download-the-guide

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