How long?  Wouldn't it be better to just set a maximum age?

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An age limit doesn't fix the problem.  Do you want Cortez to have a platform and influence for the next thirty years?  I don't.

How you or I feel about AOC is irrelevant to term limits.  A term limit would bite representatives we agree with and ones we disagree with.  Do you have any better reason to want term limits?  

Have you considered the downsides? In Florida the state legislators have term limits.  Yet when the speaker of the house or the President of the Senate gets to their term limit, they already know who the next one will be.  And the one after that.  The same elite lobbyists have a stranglehold on the process regardless of who the figureheads are.  Did you not notice that?  But if the elected official actually has more experience than the lobbyist, maybe they will stand up to the lobbyists.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

How long?  Wouldn't it be better to just set a maximum age?

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If you don't keep an eye on race while drawing the lines, and you have a racial minority that consistently wants candidates that the majority doesn't like, you will consistently disadvantage that racial minority.  Is that OK by you? It's not OK by me. 
And if you don't pay attention to political leanings while drawing lines, you will randomly give an advantage to one political side over another. You have to actually pay attention to the political leanings on the map in order to make a balanced map.
The problem we have today is that the mapmakers use the race and political data to make maps unfair.  The data should be used to make the maps fair.

If there is a sizeable minority population in any district, the candidates will have to pay attention to them.  As it is now, the Republicans love majority-black districts because it keeps a lot of Democrats out of their district, so they get re-elected over and over.   They create nice safe seats for themselves- both parties.  Congressional elections are basically uncontested because of that.  It contributes to polarization because the real election is in the primary.  The general election is a non-event.  

And beyond that, why should we guarantee any number of seats to any ethnicity?  That presupposes that white voters won't vote for a black candidate.  In fact, it actually institutionalizes that idea- that white voters are racist.  

My amendment would eliminate gerrymandering of that type.

You have to look at how the VRA jurisprudence actually works. 
This type of racial gerrymandering doesn't just happen anytime there are a significant number of racial minorities.  
The minority have to be the majority in a compact area, and numerous enough to control that area if the area were given a district.  
The minority have to be relatively homogeneous in their voting preferences.  They have to have a clear "candidate of choice".
There has to be a recent history of the ethnic majority voting against the candidates that the minority prefers.  In other words, there has to be recent history showing that the majority doesn't have to, in your words, "pay attention to them." If the history shows that the winning candidates are paying attention to the minority, then there is nothing to remedy and district lines don't need to be re-drawn.
As for what the Republicans do today, they pack and crack for partisan gain.  Good judges applying the VRA will try to ensure that just the right number of the ethnic minority are in the district, no more and no less.  Bad legislators claiming to apply the VRA will either pack too many into the district, giving the minority one seat where they could have influenced two or three seats, or too few, giving them no seats at all.
So we're already pretty close to "as good as it gets" on this issue, but it would be good if US Congress would give federal courts clearer guidelines on all of this.  Roberts said he doesn't have to police the partisan outcomes of district lines because the VRA doesn't speak to partisan outcomes.  He's right.  But a new federal law should speak to them.  This doesn't have to be a constitutional amendment.

Like you, I'm frustrated when an election is decided in the primary and the general election is a foregone conclusion.  The new federal law for district boundaries could say that they have to make as many competitive districts as possible, after they're done protecting the minorities and establishing partisan balance.  But such districts would end up pretty snake-like.  I'm not sure that's a good idea.

A better approach would simply allow voters to pick more than one candidate in the general election.  That would encourage independent candidates to run, and independent candidates don't have to go through the primary.  That doesn't have to be a constitutional amendment either.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

An age limit doesn't fix the problem.  Do you want Cortez to have a platform and influence for the next thirty years?  I don't.

How you or I feel about AOC is irrelevant to term limits.  A term limit would bite representatives we agree with and ones we disagree with.  Do you have any better reason to want term limits?  

Have you considered the downsides? In Florida the state legislators have term limits.  Yet when the speaker of the house or the President of the Senate gets to their term limit, they already know who the next one will be.  And the one after that.  The same elite lobbyists have a stranglehold on the process regardless of who the figureheads are.  Did you not notice that?  But if the elected official actually has more experience than the lobbyist, maybe they will stand up to the lobbyists.

Cortez is just an example of how an age limit doesn't fix the problem.  Power corrupts and those who get it become addicted to it.  Claiming "experience" and "influence" is just self-serving rhetoric to justify seeking more of it.  For every favor owed in Washington, one is owed in return.  I'm tired of the dealmaking.

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When you get into the endzone, act like you've been there before.

How you or I feel about AOC is irrelevant to term limits.  A term limit would bite representatives we agree with and ones we disagree with.  Do you have any better reason to want term limits?  

Have you considered the downsides? In Florida the state legislators have term limits.  Yet when the speaker of the house or the President of the Senate gets to their term limit, they already know who the next one will be.  And the one after that.  The same elite lobbyists have a stranglehold on the process regardless of who the figureheads are.  Did you not notice that?  But if the elected official actually has more experience than the lobbyist, maybe they will stand up to the lobbyists.

Cortez is just an example of how an age limit doesn't fix the problem.  Power corrupts and those who get it become addicted to it.  Claiming "experience" and "influence" is just self-serving rhetoric to justify seeking more of it.  For every favor owed in Washington, one is owed in return.  I'm tired of the dealmaking.

But I'm asking you to take a clear eyed look at places with term limits, like Tallahassee or Mexico.  Does this eliminate the deal making, as you call it?  I don't think so.  Deal making is inherent to any participatory process.  People know they can't get everything they want, so they try to get as much of what they want as possible.  The problem is they're not open about what they want because a lot of what they want is self-serving and under the table.  This happens regardless of how long they've been in office.  The only reason the ones who have been in office longer seem to get more is because committee assignments are done by seniority.  We could demand that committee assignments be done without regard to seniority and it would fix the problem.  No term limits needed.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

In 2014, Antonin Scalia and Ruth bader Ginsburg gave a joint interview, and one of the questions was if they could wish one constitutional Amendment into adoption, what would it be.
Ginsburg said she would wish for the equal Rights Amendment.
Scalia was not specific, but said he would wish for an amendment to make future amendments easier.
I agree with Scalia, it is too hard to amend the Constitution. The legislature just cannot build that kind of consensus.
Which is why all this pressure falls on judges to reinterpret it.
Something as simple as requiring the state legislatures to give every proposed amendment an up or down vote within a year, or going the other way and requiring US Congress to actually bring things proposed by the states to the floor. The article V process for a convention of states is ignored, and that needs to change.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Maybe you have your cause and effect wrong.

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Maybe you have your cause and effect wrong.

Maybe. But Scalia would have had it wrong as well.  What do you think the cause and effect relationship is?

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Maybe if judges and justices weren't so liberal in their interpretation of the law, it would create the impetus for amendments.

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Maybe if judges and justices weren't so liberal in their interpretation of the law, it would create the impetus for amendments.

I think the impetus is there regardless.  But the amendment path is too hard and the "appoint the right judges" path is too easy.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Sure, I get that. I guess it's too much to ask for them just to do their job.

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Sure, I get that. I guess it's too much to ask for them just to do their job.

At this point it is.  Not just too much, but too late. We have over 100 years of them inventing new legal doctrines and interpretive frameworks.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Just look up standing, for instance.
Other countries have very open interpretations of standing. A plaintiff hoping to demonstrate that a statute or action is unconstitutional doesn't have to demonstrate direct connection to real harm. It is presumed that everyone is interested in the constitution being followed.
Used to be that way here. But that changed in the 1920s.
You can go a little earlier, 1902, where the court ruled that there was a protected but unenumerated liberty called the "freedom of contract" and that even a duly passed state law was not the "due process of law" mentioned in the 5th and 14th amendments. Which might not have been a big deal except for the fact that states and the federal government had been regulating contracts throughout American history up to that point.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Maybe if judges and justices weren't so liberal in their interpretation of the law, it would create the impetus for amendments.

That is the biggest problem

Maybe if judges and justices weren't so liberal in their interpretation of the law, it would create the impetus for amendments.

I think the impetus is there regardless.  But the amendment path is too hard and the "appoint the right judges" path is too easy.

The issue is that the constitution doesn't need to be broad but the government has given itself too much power. States should have most of the power but it has been given up over time because the elites get in power of the states and didn't fight the power grab.

Limited federal power means limited constitution. A new one put out by the liberals would probably end up being over 10,000 pages ... unless they just put the government can do whatever they want.

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