Should Incumbents Be Challenged?

I'm not really into the whole team mentality of politics. Why should anyone get excited that Candidate A has been elected just because he happens to be a member of Party B, just like you? If what's important to you isn't important to A, then his affiliation with B doesn't really mean all that much. Nonetheless, it seems like people who are into politics routinely cheer on tired old incumbents whose views only match their own tangentially just because they're on the right team. This attitude only serves to empower career politicians and weakens democracy.

Democracy, as I see it, is fundamentally about choice. Because everyone has a voice, each person gets to have a measure of input when it comes to the policies of their government either directly and indirectly. If we can't choose among various points of view, though, our representation becomes more and more indirect and limited. A major problem in the United States (and probably most other countries with two party systems) is that neither party takes the opposing view on some issues so that there is no escaping this "default" view no matter how you vote. I'm not just talking about fringe issues here, either: the Iraq War resolutions, though controversial, drew bipartisan support in Congress.

When incumbents aren't challenged in their party's primary, there is only room for one Democratic or Republican voice. While political party affiliation isn't entirely useless as an indicator for policy viewpoints, I don't think voters in either party are being well-served by not being allowed a choice. The Democrat who supports the legalization of marijuana or the Republican who wants the budget to be balanced shouldn't be told to put their feelings aside and just vote for the establishment candidate because he or she has already been elected in the past. These voters might well vote for what they perceive to be the lesser of two evils in the general election, but to ask them to forgo meaningful participation even in their own party's primaries seems entirely too cruel.

On a practical level, it makes sense for the political parties to support their incumbents as long as you assume the whole point of a political party is to win elections. An unchallenged incumbent focuses his or her resources and political capital on winning the ultimate prize, the general election. No primary competition means no in-fighting; the disaffected voters will just stay home until it comes time for them to do their job and vote for the lesser evil once again. If, on the other hand, political parties are supposed to have some responsibility to stand up for the wishes and values of ALL of their members, then challengers should be welcomed not as traitors to the party cause but rather as defenders of democracy.