Satisfaction -- I can't GET no -- No no no...

I broke it down.

Two days ago I wrote in my blog post about voting patterns I don't understand in the state where I live. My thoughts and ideas and memories were sort of floating around and I was unsatisfied with how clearly I made my point(s), so must try again.

It seems to me, when I vote, I think like this:
1.
When voting for senators and representatives for Washington, I vote based on who I think will do the best job. If there's an incumbent and I think he's going a good job, I'll probably vote to re-elect him. If I think the quality of his representation of my state is less than what the challenger will offer, then I will vote for the challenger.

2.
When voting for state-level senators and representatives, I apply the same idea.

That makes sense, to me.
Voting patterns of my state's electorate are different from my approach.
Now, I don't have to conform to the majority,
and they don't have to conform to me.
However, I do struggle to try to understand the mind-set, or philosophy behind certain of the voting "statements" made by my fellow citizens.
--------------------------------
1.
Washington.
18 years is the longest our state's voters will keep a senator in. Went and checked: high-profile, influential senators in recent years (by recent, I mean since mid-20th century) each served 18 years, or, three 6-year terms. None stepped down -- all three lost their bid for a fourth term. Now, if West Virginia voted like that, Senator Byrd would have been done in 1976, 34 years earlier. (There's perspective!)

When a senator has served long enough and learned enough about how to do a good job, and how to get things done, he can have influence (or "clout," as we like to say) on behalf of his state. He can chair key committees, etc. Being able to have influence on behalf of your state's people means something to me, and it must mean something to the voters in the Southern states where they've traditionally re-elected their guys for many successive terms if they're doing a good job.

If you vote to take your experienced, influential guy OUT, and put a totally new guy IN, then you are in a sense "starting over" at "the bottom."

However, the voters in the state where I live have shown, time and again, that they like to start over at the bottom, and they do not place a value on our senators or representatives having influence in Washington.

Is this because we are a "frontier" state? Is it a "pioneer" spirit of wanting to change and start over someplace new? A covered-wagon mentality?

A guy I used to know said once in disgust, "The people in this state resent success, and they like to lose."

I don't know about that.
What about this? Our electorate doesn't understand the power of influence in Washington, because they're not interested, and they see elections as an opportunity only to "lob a grenade" at somebody. (If they could vote some other state's senator out of office they would, but they can't, so they vote their own guy out. -- in politics, there's an old saying credited to Lyndon Johnson -- "I'd rather be inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in."

Do the voters in my state see an election as an opportunity to "piss into the tent"?
In my quest to understand this electorate phenomenon, I remain unsatisfied.

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