The Importance of Term Limits - Episode 2

Episode 2 dives into the single reform Don believes would do more to clean up Congress than any other: real, enforceable term limits for senators, representatives, and federal judges.

Don breaks down how career incumbency rewards fundraising over governing, why "20 and out" for judges would restore accountability to the bench, and how term limits would shift power back to the citizens of South Carolina.

He walks through the math of incumbency advantage — name recognition, franked mail, lopsided fundraising, and gerrymandered safe seats — and explains why the polite argument that "voters already have term limits at the ballot box" simply does not hold up against the data.

The conversation also tackles the practical mechanics: a constitutional amendment versus statutory caps, how to phase in limits without disrupting committee work, and why federal judges in particular need a hard ceiling so the bench reflects the country it serves rather than the country that existed forty years ago.

Don connects term limits back to every other plank of the platform. Without them, he argues, fixing insider trading, ending exclusive congressional benefits, and breaking the donor stranglehold all become exponentially harder, because the same people who benefit from the status quo are the ones holding the votes.

By the end of the episode you will understand why term limits sit at the very top of the campaign's priority list — and why Don believes a single independent senator from South Carolina can move the conversation further in two years than the past two decades of partisan promises ever did.

Key takeaways from this episode

• Why incumbency advantage has made ballot-box "term limits" a myth.
• The case for "20 and out" caps on federal judicial service.
• How term limits unlock every other reform on the platform.

Related reading from the campaign

• Term limits are the goal
• 20 and out for federal judges
• Where term limits sit in the platform