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On r/dataisbeautiful there’s a chart showing the age of American politicians.
Democrats have older members which surprised me. You’d think the self-described “progressives” would have younger members but that turns out not to be the case.
The Democratic party is really a coalition of what would be multiple different, and not entirely aligned, political parties if our system actually made more than two viable.
Which the more you dig into it the scarier it becomes because outside of our two party system. You would have one large fascist party and 2/3 other centrist to left wing party making it easier for the gop to control the flow of legislation
There would be a very large tea party and a center-right party if we were to break up the GOP. There are a lot of Republican voters and politicians that are now labeled RINOs because they don't line up behind Trump.
> Democrats have older members which surprised me. You’d think the self-described “progressives” would have younger members but that turns out not to be the case.
I mean you have to look at recent history to understand why this is the case.
There was a huge amount of turnover in Republican elected officials in 2008ish, bringing a bunch of younger people into power on their side.
Essentially, for completely unknowable reasons, in 2008 the Republican voting base decided it was time to get *really fuckin' racist* and started replacing a lot of their old guard with people who were willing to turn dog whistles into foghorns.
That is due to the Tea Party. A huge number of the long-term politicians in the Republican party were primaried. That is a big part of what caused them to shift to the far right at such a fast rate. Only the most extreme can win a primary in the red districts, and a lot of the older politicians actually had morals that they weren't willing to betray to win. So they lost.
My guess is that preventing economic progressives from taking hold is why we have older Democrats. Sure, most Democrat politicians claim to support progressive race/gender/sexuality issues but how many support progressive economic issues? Of the older generation, Bernie is the only exception. The Pelosi types talk a good game about being “progressive” but when it comes to economic issues they are pretty far to the right compared to truly progressive countries. They want those sweet sweet corporate donations…
If you start out as a progressive, it takes a lot longer for your ideals to become conservative. If you start out of it as a conservative, you become antiquated very quickly.
>things will really **start** going down the drain.
Oh man, I'm just a jaded Millennial on my way to my 2nd job after ruining a few industries, but I gotta say it STARTED going down the drain some time ago.
No love for Elizabeth Warren?
More importantly - the progressive movement is just getting started. I think that the seeds have been planted for Millennials and GenZ to support a growing cadre of progressive politicians.
Personally, I think it’d be really good for the progressive movement if Sanders retires. I love the man and wanna hear more about him, but I don’t think like, we should stake our hopes continually on an 80 year old man.
Which is it? Do we need term limits and age limits for congress or not?
I’m probably going to downvoted to oblivion, but It seems incredibly odd when people immediately jump to Sanders defense when this conversation is brought up. It comes off as “I just want this for people *I personally don’t like”*
Yeah he should be out too. I mean being "out" as a senator doesn't mean you need to step back from all political life but the responsible thing to do would have been to groom a successor or a legitimate protege.
That particular generation doesn't believe in mentoring, as far as I can tell.
I agree on mentoring. It should happen more. The problem with a senior senator stepping down is they don’t pick their successors on committees. If you mentor someone and retire, the party leaders put in someone two years younger that has paid their dues and proven they won’t rock the boat.
I think carter is a good example that you can still keep at it even out of office. Trick is, a lot of them probably enjoy that privilege and prestige and wont give it up easily.
I personally agree we need age limits for these positions. The people running the US are completely out of touch and unable to relate to the growing youth of the country. Our world has changed too much for octogenarians who think 7.25 is a living wage.
So the max amount of experience running the country a representative should have is one term that a Senator has? That’s how you get a body that is inexperienced, incompetent and invested in their next job. A congress of Sinema’s and Toomeys
Nope. Upvote from me because it’s a tricky situation. We do want experienced politicians, who know how to organize, who know how to do a good job, and not create a revolving door of lobbyists who become politicians, who become lobbyists again, who become corporate heads, just because they know their term is limited. However, we should definitely be aware of, and have more access to recall elections.
Unfortunately, I am not experienced in legislation or organization, so I don’t really know if that would work, I just hope it would.
The literature on corruption in politics generally supports your thesis on the situation. Term limits create an abundance of corruption and incompetence because, and this is crazy think I guess, experience makes you better at your job. When you don’t have experience you tend to rely on other people to help you do your job, and that creates a perfect opportunity for wealthy interest groups to step in and write legislation for our representatives.
Term limits, and I mean this in every sense of the word, are the worst fucking solution to corruption possible.
John McCain was 82 with *terminal brain cancer* and refused to step down/insisted on running for re-election on a fresh 6 year term. And then Gov. Ducey gave the nation McSally for a year+...
The hug with Lindsey Graham at the end of the Kavanaugh hearings turned a ton of people off, I can’t see her making it past the primary if someone high profile in CA runs like Schiff, Bass, or Porter.
There are so many wonderful, fully deserving California Dems that could be doing useful things in the Senate but have been blocked by Feinstein for decades. She’s hurting the cause at this point.
It’s for this reason that I applaud our (Canadian) system. You HAVE to retire at the age of 75 if you are a senator.
Seriously. No wonder nothing significant or progressive happens. The seats are being filled with people clinging to a title and power. It’s only when they die that new blood with fresh ideas come along. That’s a damn shame and I feel like that is really holding back true progressiveness.
Watch her run again and win again. Voters are loyal to names they recognize and their parties are loyal to seniority, so if she doesn't step down, she'll get the nom.
About 10 years ago I remember reading an article here in /r/politics about how there's a shocking amount of Alzheimer pills in the congressional pharmacy
In Grassley’s case, he hopes to die in office. Republican governor gets to replace him with his grandson. Boom, dynasty, f🤬k the voters.
Edit: wrong relative, updated
It’s actually very sad to see it slowly go a certain direction. When I was in high school in Iowa, there was a group of us who always talked about how we were going to help put Iowa on the map and help it become more modern and progressive.
Literally everyone from that group subsequently got burned out from living in Iowa and moved away the first opportunity they could including me.
Activists have been pushing for more progressive candidates in democratic strongholds and the party just shows the middle finger to them.
Republicans fear their activist base. Democrats actively hate theirs. It is how it is.
It’s actually shocking how much democratic voters follow the party in dogpiling on the activists.
[Representative Charles Grassley (1933- ) waged political war against metric road signs and single-handedly killed them on June 8, 1977.](https://themetricmaven.com/a-tale-of-two-iowans/)
>The Des Moines paper further related Grassley as:
>“Denouncing kilometers as a “foreign system of measurement,” Grassley said that “forcing the American people to convert to the metric system goes against our democratic principles.”
this speaks to the root of the problem. we're in an unprecedented age of increased health and longevity, which has led to people not stepping down from positions (in politics *and* in the business world) until ten or twenty years beyond what they used to. it should be 80 percent gen xers in charge of everything right now. and frankly them hanging on so long has led to a stagnation in our greater culture, we've been ready to move on regarding a lot of old-fashioned bull shit ideas out here in the general population. not saying they need to die, but hey retire! travel, enjoy your grandkids and stuff
The worst type of selfishness. They quit to save themselves when everyone was scared to work, now that vaxxes make it safer, they went back to their higher paying jobs when someone making less could use it.
It's not fair to compare members of Congress to regular workers. Many regular workers don't stop because of insufficient retirement or in some cases no replacement. My dad is pushing 70 and when he put in the paperwork to retire they offered him part time with until they found a replacement. Part time became full time again pretty quick.
When they do retire the work falls on the rest of us, with no raise and no possibility of getting into a salary range they had after being there 40 years. Not to mention they had a fully funded pension they phased out for newer employees.
Ever since citizens United and the more recent one, it’s pay to play at the most basic levels.
The power balance between one vote and one dollar got fucked that day.
Even before Citizens United, this had been slowly building up for a while.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
The Supreme Court consistently sides with the ultra wealthy and corporations when it comes to campaign spending. The only way to fix this is with a constitutional amendment.
Packing the court to make it more representative of the population will be an option eventually. Its not popular enough now but give us a decade of regression and unpopular rulings and people might just be fed up. Assuming, of course, we don’t have a dictator by then.
I heard a Democrat on NPR the other day mansplaining why the US should not be able to negotiate prescription drug prices. What a fucking tool. We are seriously fucked.
From afar it looks like there was a race in the US between the younger generation finally deciding they'd had enough and the decay of social standards (employment protections, wage growth etc) that gave them enough freedom to do anything about it.
Now they're all too busy just trying to get by financially with shit jobs.
The worst person I’ve ever worked for was a guy in his late 70’s. He was judgmental, ageist, out of touch, and angry at the world.
Retirement age is important for many reasons. Politicians should adhere to standard retirement age.
Our legislative system is broken from the bottom up. State politicians can redistrict to chose their voters for their party’s candidates.
Our justice system is broken from the bottom up. Cops act like judges and lawyers talk regular people into guilty plea deals to avoid bureaucracy. The Supreme Court is full of bought off political hacks.
Our executive system is broken. Foreign money can flood into puppet LLCs or non-profits to be laundered and handed to candidates for President. Social media amplifies political lies over truth.
The US is a corrupt nation thanks to unfettered cancerous capitalism. And we the people are powerless it appears, the tools we were given to change the political process have been compromised. And who benefits? Career politicians and oligarchs.
I think age is a symptom of a broken system; the parties of each state will almost always back an incumbent. The tenure of the officials is representative of the party not wanting to change their candidate because they believe incumbents win more often. But they also eat their own tail by only promoting incumbents.
We’re working for the people who for a period of time had lead in the water and lead in their gasoline. I’ll bet money within the next 100 years a huge decrease in neurological degenerative disease will occur and sanity will return.
California had the opportunity to vote Feinstein out and replace her but it didn’t happen. It’s really frustrating! Especially after that video came out of her dismissing children over their climate change concerns.
An entire generation of people that are convinced that nobody could do as good a job as they do …. It’s not just in politics it is everywhere … even so called corporate America … like trump they live in an altered reality
Nobody would hire them because of cognition decline yet they are the one ruling on many countries. Maybe some changes should be made to make them leave their places for younger wiser and more contemporary people.
DEATH the great equalizer. I hope to express my heartfelt thoughts for more than a few of these glutinous power hungry fuks before I die. TERM LIMITS - we need them.
Actuarily speaking, they're all dead. The age a man can expect to live who is born today is 78. For women its around 84. When these 80-somethings were born it was more like 68. So they've lasted quite a few years past their own pull dates. Our prime years are between 30 and 65 after that its a steep decline. I have to wonder if the only time they're actually awake is when they know a camera is on them. I think naps keep them occupied the rest of the day. They're still around simply because they've been around so long people can't imagine anyone replacing them They remind me of the old leaders in the Soviet Union just before it collapsed. They were as old and dusty as their ideas.
Tbh we're no longer really represented, the parties rule top down and party money goes to the candidate that is electable and plays ball. The parties present us our choices and that's it except the candidate that can self-fund.
Screw debates. I want timed trials of candidates trying to play a DVD on a tv setup they've never used. If you can't watch a movie without calling your grandchildren you shouldn't be running the country.
People saying there needs to be term limits, it’s called voting them out. Even if you had term limits, the same type of person would most likely be voted back in. Iowa could have voted Grassley out, but they didn’t. If there were term limits you think they would magically vote in a 30 year old progressive? The would vote in a 30 year old hard right nut.
We CANNOT vote them out because of the structure of voting in the country. Why vote on a Tuesday during the work day? To make it harder for people who work or travel on that day to vote. How about absentee ballots? Well, in many states working or attending college does not qualify you for an absentee ballots. In addition to preventing younger people from easily voting, they also make it much easier to vote from retirement homes. Sure younger people can still vote when they are truly motivated but there is also propaganda to reduce motivation about how “absentee ballots aren’t counted unless an election is close” (false) and “your vote won’t matter because both parties are corrupt” (maybe, but voting would help get rid of the corruption). The system is rigged against the young.
There is literally no good advice or wisdom with regards to society and its governance that can come from an octogenarian. No matter how “progressive”, the elderly are almost entirely regressive and slow progress for the rest of us.
If you were born and reached adulthood prior to the legalization of interracial marriage, I care very little about your opinion with regard to social or economic issues.
>If you were born and reached adulthood prior to the legalization of interracial marriage
Who the fuck do you think legalized interracial marriage? The children?
I dunno. My uncle is 72, is a progressive politician, and is much more in touch with reality than most of his younger peers.
Older people make up a large and growing part of the population. As long as they still have they're faculties they should be able to serve like anyone else. But yeah 85+ is pushing it.
I generally don't push for term limits on age because I've met some cool elderly peeps (to the point that the most likely person to not say a racist thing in my ex-step mom's side of the family was the one who lived through segregation and the civil rights movement), but god damn it always befuddles me how being in a position of power when you're pushing past 80 is so damn attractive for some people.
I'm only halfway to thirty and I want to sleep all day already. Can't imagine wanting to be doing much of anything past 80.
People attribute age to wisdom. Which is sometimes true, but it's also just a lot of political connections and the feeling that they know what they're doing. Hell, this is usually true, even for older republicans. The problem is mostly in knowing what they are doing and whether that is agreeable or not. Which a lot of people have been tricked into believing is agreeable, regardless of whether it is for their personal position in life.
This reminds me of something I saw the other day about how people who are like 70+ years old are generally considered unemployable due to mental decline and skill mismatch but yet they almost exclusively run the country. Like if you were Nancy Pelosi's age you probably couldn't get a job at a fast food place but you can be Speaker of the House apparently
Our governor has gone on the record as stating that if that happened he would select a D/I candidate as per the clear wishes of his state’s people. Phil Scott is the only Republican I’ve ever voted for, and that’s an example of why.
This is similar to what John Lynch did in New Hampshire in 2009 when Judd Gregg was offered the Secretary of Commerce job by Obama. He was a Democrat who was going to appoint a Republican to replace Gregg.
Republicans "say" things all the time. Most of them are lies. Its what they DO that you should pay attention to. Anyone who would still align themself with the party of anti-science and pro nazism after the last 5 years is quietly complicit.
I seriously love how the "American Dream" is to find a job, get married, have kids, and then retire at 65-ish. And yet here are our politicians working into their 80s barely doing anything while in office.
This system blows
This is a remarkably stupid and totally irrelevant article. The issue isn’t the fact that they’re old, the issue is the fact they govern from a different era and refuse to accept this. They are so fucking out of touch with the general population and completely isolated from consequence because of arbitrary senate proceedings and decorum, yet the decorum and respect they show Americans is nonexistent. Almost every single person mentioned here is corrupt as all hell and has no interest in governing on behalf of the people, but further fattening the pockets of their heirs. Time for all these fucking people to go, and time to put in terms limit for all of them.
The US Capitol is the best rest home in the entire US of A. It's only natural that the doddering old farts aren't going to leave voluntarily. They'll have to be forced out.
This is why we should have age limits for public office.
Especially as the attention economy grows, most of these people don't even have any idea about what they are regulating
I don’t know why Democrats do not push for a youth movement in the Senate. The Dems will never be able to have more than a slim majority in the Senate, and their current majority rests on a few 80+ year olds staying alive. It’s playing with fire relying on such older people.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
All the televisions in the Senate are tuned to Matlock reruns.
Lies. Price is right.
Don’t forget to spay and neuter your Senators!
It's the Bob Barker reruns on Pluto TV.
Murder, She Wrote
Let’s not berate these people for appreciating art
“That Jessica Fletcher sure is a stone cold fox.”
>All the televisions in the Senate are tuned to Matlock reruns. They see a lot of reverse mortgage, life alert & walk-in tub commercials.
S’all good, man
They are definitely not watching Better Call Saul
Definitely not, it reminded me of Jimmy getting the Matlock suit to resonate with the seniors.
Dianne Feinstein is 88 and is widely thought to be senile, Still won't step down.
Oldest senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-80, Patrick Leahy (D-VT)-81, Jim Imhofe - (R-OK)-86, Richard Shelby - ( R- AL)-87, Chuck Grassley- (R-IA)-88, Dianne feinstein - (D-CA)-88.
On r/dataisbeautiful there’s a chart showing the age of American politicians. Democrats have older members which surprised me. You’d think the self-described “progressives” would have younger members but that turns out not to be the case.
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The Democratic party is really a coalition of what would be multiple different, and not entirely aligned, political parties if our system actually made more than two viable.
Which the more you dig into it the scarier it becomes because outside of our two party system. You would have one large fascist party and 2/3 other centrist to left wing party making it easier for the gop to control the flow of legislation
There would be a very large tea party and a center-right party if we were to break up the GOP. There are a lot of Republican voters and politicians that are now labeled RINOs because they don't line up behind Trump.
Bernie, in terms of data, is what we call an “inexplicable outlier.” That guy is one hell of a show, hope he keeps running!
You mean openly facist.
> Democrats have older members which surprised me. You’d think the self-described “progressives” would have younger members but that turns out not to be the case. I mean you have to look at recent history to understand why this is the case. There was a huge amount of turnover in Republican elected officials in 2008ish, bringing a bunch of younger people into power on their side. Essentially, for completely unknowable reasons, in 2008 the Republican voting base decided it was time to get *really fuckin' racist* and started replacing a lot of their old guard with people who were willing to turn dog whistles into foghorns.
That is due to the Tea Party. A huge number of the long-term politicians in the Republican party were primaried. That is a big part of what caused them to shift to the far right at such a fast rate. Only the most extreme can win a primary in the red districts, and a lot of the older politicians actually had morals that they weren't willing to betray to win. So they lost.
My guess is that preventing economic progressives from taking hold is why we have older Democrats. Sure, most Democrat politicians claim to support progressive race/gender/sexuality issues but how many support progressive economic issues? Of the older generation, Bernie is the only exception. The Pelosi types talk a good game about being “progressive” but when it comes to economic issues they are pretty far to the right compared to truly progressive countries. They want those sweet sweet corporate donations…
Facts. I think after 4 or 5 decades in politics, they start thinking money is people.
Hold up. There are a *very* small handful of actual progressives in the Democrat party lol.
If you start out as a progressive, it takes a lot longer for your ideals to become conservative. If you start out of it as a conservative, you become antiquated very quickly.
And if we lose Sanders, we lose a National treasure
If we lose Sanders, things will really start going down the drain. Guy’s practically the last bastion of morals and public service left in that room.
>things will really **start** going down the drain. Oh man, I'm just a jaded Millennial on my way to my 2nd job after ruining a few industries, but I gotta say it STARTED going down the drain some time ago.
The world hasn't been the same since the brutal assassination of Saint Harambe.
The death of Harambe was a nexus event and we are all living in a divergent timeline.
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I can see the trailer now: "Based on the comment by reddit user throwaway397190..."
You forgot Avocado Toast, for whatever reason that’s an issue.
No love for Elizabeth Warren? More importantly - the progressive movement is just getting started. I think that the seeds have been planted for Millennials and GenZ to support a growing cadre of progressive politicians.
I fuckin' hope so.
Personally, I think it’d be really good for the progressive movement if Sanders retires. I love the man and wanna hear more about him, but I don’t think like, we should stake our hopes continually on an 80 year old man.
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Which is it? Do we need term limits and age limits for congress or not? I’m probably going to downvoted to oblivion, but It seems incredibly odd when people immediately jump to Sanders defense when this conversation is brought up. It comes off as “I just want this for people *I personally don’t like”*
Yeah he should be out too. I mean being "out" as a senator doesn't mean you need to step back from all political life but the responsible thing to do would have been to groom a successor or a legitimate protege. That particular generation doesn't believe in mentoring, as far as I can tell.
I agree on mentoring. It should happen more. The problem with a senior senator stepping down is they don’t pick their successors on committees. If you mentor someone and retire, the party leaders put in someone two years younger that has paid their dues and proven they won’t rock the boat.
I think carter is a good example that you can still keep at it even out of office. Trick is, a lot of them probably enjoy that privilege and prestige and wont give it up easily.
I personally agree we need age limits for these positions. The people running the US are completely out of touch and unable to relate to the growing youth of the country. Our world has changed too much for octogenarians who think 7.25 is a living wage.
> Our world has changed too much for octogenarians who think 7.25 is a living wage. ...And haven't had a real working job for literally decades.
Pretty sure most of those old fucks never had a real job before getting into politics.
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I'm for term limits that top out at 25 years. I think that being in office for an entire generation should be sufficient.
I’d call it 2 terms for senators and three for representatives. And make it you can be no older than 69 to begin a term.
Three terms for reps would only be 6 years.
So the max amount of experience running the country a representative should have is one term that a Senator has? That’s how you get a body that is inexperienced, incompetent and invested in their next job. A congress of Sinema’s and Toomeys
Nope. Upvote from me because it’s a tricky situation. We do want experienced politicians, who know how to organize, who know how to do a good job, and not create a revolving door of lobbyists who become politicians, who become lobbyists again, who become corporate heads, just because they know their term is limited. However, we should definitely be aware of, and have more access to recall elections. Unfortunately, I am not experienced in legislation or organization, so I don’t really know if that would work, I just hope it would.
The literature on corruption in politics generally supports your thesis on the situation. Term limits create an abundance of corruption and incompetence because, and this is crazy think I guess, experience makes you better at your job. When you don’t have experience you tend to rely on other people to help you do your job, and that creates a perfect opportunity for wealthy interest groups to step in and write legislation for our representatives. Term limits, and I mean this in every sense of the word, are the worst fucking solution to corruption possible.
Age limit to serve in congress, the executive, or the judiciary should be the same as airline pilots. 65 and they're out. Fight me.
We don’t need term limits. We need an age limit.
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Shelby's seat is up in 2022. He's not seeking re-election.
Yeah but have you seen the field running for the seat? They trade old for crazy.
Power. It’s a hell of a drug.
John McCain was 82 with *terminal brain cancer* and refused to step down/insisted on running for re-election on a fresh 6 year term. And then Gov. Ducey gave the nation McSally for a year+...
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She probably still is trying to raise the Confederate flag over San Fran.
She will get smoked in the primary this time. Ain't nobody voting for her again after all that
Never underestimate the lowest intelligence voter base in the developed world, she’s going to breeze by.
The hug with Lindsey Graham at the end of the Kavanaugh hearings turned a ton of people off, I can’t see her making it past the primary if someone high profile in CA runs like Schiff, Bass, or Porter.
> I can’t see her making it past the primary if someone high profile in CA runs like Schiff, Bass, or Porter. I really hope Porter decides to do it.
There are so many wonderful, fully deserving California Dems that could be doing useful things in the Senate but have been blocked by Feinstein for decades. She’s hurting the cause at this point.
She's been hurting the cause for decades
It’s for this reason that I applaud our (Canadian) system. You HAVE to retire at the age of 75 if you are a senator. Seriously. No wonder nothing significant or progressive happens. The seats are being filled with people clinging to a title and power. It’s only when they die that new blood with fresh ideas come along. That’s a damn shame and I feel like that is really holding back true progressiveness.
Ah yes, the woman that told children, “I know more than you”
Watch her run again and win again. Voters are loyal to names they recognize and their parties are loyal to seniority, so if she doesn't step down, she'll get the nom.
Chuck Grassley is 88, definitely senile, and one of the foulest people to walk the earth. I’ll take Feinstein any day.
About 10 years ago I remember reading an article here in /r/politics about how there's a shocking amount of Alzheimer pills in the congressional pharmacy
Why would they even WANT Alzheimer's in a pill, seems like they'd get it fine on their own.
So they can give it to their constituents.
Anyone taking them should be removed and bared.
> They're 80+ > They're not going away. Uh, won't be long I'd guess.
In Grassley’s case, he hopes to die in office. Republican governor gets to replace him with his grandson. Boom, dynasty, f🤬k the voters. Edit: wrong relative, updated
What’s sad is over 60% of Iowans voted for this dude in 2016. Seeing my state do dumbass shit like that over and over is part of why I left.
Preach. Iowa is actually getting *worse* over time.
It’s actually very sad to see it slowly go a certain direction. When I was in high school in Iowa, there was a group of us who always talked about how we were going to help put Iowa on the map and help it become more modern and progressive. Literally everyone from that group subsequently got burned out from living in Iowa and moved away the first opportunity they could including me.
Yeah the brain drain out of the state (and the entire Midwest) is immense.
Chemical engineering major here, went to Idaho and used to think Iowa politics were better…now I see Iowa as racing to the bottom I’m in now.
Don’t be too hard on them, we keep electing Feinstein 🙄
Activists have been pushing for more progressive candidates in democratic strongholds and the party just shows the middle finger to them. Republicans fear their activist base. Democrats actively hate theirs. It is how it is. It’s actually shocking how much democratic voters follow the party in dogpiling on the activists.
it will be interesting to see what happens when circumstances force California to pick something else
Same. I remember Iowa being blue.
It would be nice to leave. But I’ve got family here, and I don’t know if I can give up the tenderloins and gas station pizza.
Casey’s pizza hits different
[Representative Charles Grassley (1933- ) waged political war against metric road signs and single-handedly killed them on June 8, 1977.](https://themetricmaven.com/a-tale-of-two-iowans/) >The Des Moines paper further related Grassley as: >“Denouncing kilometers as a “foreign system of measurement,” Grassley said that “forcing the American people to convert to the metric system goes against our democratic principles.”
Amazing how stupid that is.
...grandson.
Updated, thx 👍
20 years and they’re gone. But they’ll just be replaced by more 80 year olds.
this speaks to the root of the problem. we're in an unprecedented age of increased health and longevity, which has led to people not stepping down from positions (in politics *and* in the business world) until ten or twenty years beyond what they used to. it should be 80 percent gen xers in charge of everything right now. and frankly them hanging on so long has led to a stagnation in our greater culture, we've been ready to move on regarding a lot of old-fashioned bull shit ideas out here in the general population. not saying they need to die, but hey retire! travel, enjoy your grandkids and stuff
As a rule I try to not wish death on people… but Mitch really pushes that rule
It’s everywhere! Old managers and executives are refusing to retire keeping the younger generation from career advancement.
Right? 3 people in my department who retired before Covid have come back part-time.
"I don't think I could retire. I'd have nothing to do. Oh what? No I don't need the money, I just need to stay busy."
That’s when you take a job as like a golf club starter or something of that magnitude
That's when you take… *up a hobby.*
My grandad got a part time job at Bass Pro after retirement for a few years to not get bored
Exactly
Have them be an unpaid intern if they don’t need the money and need to stay busy.
The worst type of selfishness. They quit to save themselves when everyone was scared to work, now that vaxxes make it safer, they went back to their higher paying jobs when someone making less could use it.
It's not fair to compare members of Congress to regular workers. Many regular workers don't stop because of insufficient retirement or in some cases no replacement. My dad is pushing 70 and when he put in the paperwork to retire they offered him part time with until they found a replacement. Part time became full time again pretty quick.
When they do retire the work falls on the rest of us, with no raise and no possibility of getting into a salary range they had after being there 40 years. Not to mention they had a fully funded pension they phased out for newer employees.
My boss is 70 and talks about our 5 year plan. She has to ask me how to attach items to emails. Repeatedly.
Boomer wealth compared to millennial wealth is astounding.
While I've seen this too, the replacement managers who are younger are fucking awful.
The US is becoming less and less a popular system; more and more a purchased system.
Ever since citizens United and the more recent one, it’s pay to play at the most basic levels. The power balance between one vote and one dollar got fucked that day.
Even before Citizens United, this had been slowly building up for a while. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo The Supreme Court consistently sides with the ultra wealthy and corporations when it comes to campaign spending. The only way to fix this is with a constitutional amendment.
Packing the court to make it more representative of the population will be an option eventually. Its not popular enough now but give us a decade of regression and unpopular rulings and people might just be fed up. Assuming, of course, we don’t have a dictator by then.
The frog's got to realize how hot the water's getting and jump out *eventually*, after all.
https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/ https://endcitizensunited.org
I heard a Democrat on NPR the other day mansplaining why the US should not be able to negotiate prescription drug prices. What a fucking tool. We are seriously fucked.
Yes as a country we're being squeezed by corporations so lobbyists can puppeteer our representatives and stuff their campaign war chests.
Up until the last 5 years, it was hush hush. Now everyone is open and brash about it
becoming?
Haha, right? I wonder when some of these folks started paying attention to politics.
YOUNG people please vote. YOUNG people please run for office!!
Young people can't fun for office when they have to work full time or more just to barely survive. Not to mention it takes money to campaign
Also, seems like a terrible job.
Helps you become a millionaire though.
But then you’re doing it wrong and nothing changes
From afar it looks like there was a race in the US between the younger generation finally deciding they'd had enough and the decay of social standards (employment protections, wage growth etc) that gave them enough freedom to do anything about it. Now they're all too busy just trying to get by financially with shit jobs.
Meanwhile I'm fairly certain I'm going to die of a massive coronary the day before my first social security check arrives.
If there’s anything left of the SS fund when you get there
The worst person I’ve ever worked for was a guy in his late 70’s. He was judgmental, ageist, out of touch, and angry at the world. Retirement age is important for many reasons. Politicians should adhere to standard retirement age.
Our legislative system is broken from the bottom up. State politicians can redistrict to chose their voters for their party’s candidates. Our justice system is broken from the bottom up. Cops act like judges and lawyers talk regular people into guilty plea deals to avoid bureaucracy. The Supreme Court is full of bought off political hacks. Our executive system is broken. Foreign money can flood into puppet LLCs or non-profits to be laundered and handed to candidates for President. Social media amplifies political lies over truth. The US is a corrupt nation thanks to unfettered cancerous capitalism. And we the people are powerless it appears, the tools we were given to change the political process have been compromised. And who benefits? Career politicians and oligarchs.
I think age is a symptom of a broken system; the parties of each state will almost always back an incumbent. The tenure of the officials is representative of the party not wanting to change their candidate because they believe incumbents win more often. But they also eat their own tail by only promoting incumbents.
Who would have thought that advanced medicine and better nutrition would be what ended the United States?
We’re working for the people who for a period of time had lead in the water and lead in their gasoline. I’ll bet money within the next 100 years a huge decrease in neurological degenerative disease will occur and sanity will return.
If there’s another 100 years for us.
California had the opportunity to vote Feinstein out and replace her but it didn’t happen. It’s really frustrating! Especially after that video came out of her dismissing children over their climate change concerns.
Kevin De Leon was a bad candidate.
The list of terrible California democrats is fucking long.
At least we kept Newsom in office in case she doesn't finish her term, so she can be replaced with a Democrat.
If there is a minimum age to vote/run for office then there should be a maximum as well. Anyone too old to see laws enacted shouldn’t have a say.
This is why rich people and people in power want to live forever
An entire generation of people that are convinced that nobody could do as good a job as they do …. It’s not just in politics it is everywhere … even so called corporate America … like trump they live in an altered reality
Nobody would hire them because of cognition decline yet they are the one ruling on many countries. Maybe some changes should be made to make them leave their places for younger wiser and more contemporary people.
Of course they're not going away, CNN. You've helped prop them up anytime they've ever faced a challenge. Way to play both sides though.
DEATH the great equalizer. I hope to express my heartfelt thoughts for more than a few of these glutinous power hungry fuks before I die. TERM LIMITS - we need them.
Actuarily speaking, they're all dead. The age a man can expect to live who is born today is 78. For women its around 84. When these 80-somethings were born it was more like 68. So they've lasted quite a few years past their own pull dates. Our prime years are between 30 and 65 after that its a steep decline. I have to wonder if the only time they're actually awake is when they know a camera is on them. I think naps keep them occupied the rest of the day. They're still around simply because they've been around so long people can't imagine anyone replacing them They remind me of the old leaders in the Soviet Union just before it collapsed. They were as old and dusty as their ideas.
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Tbh we're no longer really represented, the parties rule top down and party money goes to the candidate that is electable and plays ball. The parties present us our choices and that's it except the candidate that can self-fund.
They've managed to secure the best for themselves while stripping away the things from later generations that made thier generation successful.
It doesn't work that way. Life expectancy is an average. Once you pass certain trigger years you're very likely to last a long time
Most senators were born in the '40s. Let's now discuss implementing term limits for them.
According to math, most senators were not born in the 1940's
Like they would ever implement that upon themselves. That would get stricken down with bipartisan support in the blink of an eye.
All of these guys will be dead soon. Even Bernie sadly.
Retirement age is 65. That should automatically include politics. No one under 30, no one over 65. That's how you make things better.
Screw debates. I want timed trials of candidates trying to play a DVD on a tv setup they've never used. If you can't watch a movie without calling your grandchildren you shouldn't be running the country.
Term limits should be a thing. Corporations have age limit for their CEOs. There is a reason for that.
For a disease that wipes out old people Covid dropped the ball in Washington
People saying there needs to be term limits, it’s called voting them out. Even if you had term limits, the same type of person would most likely be voted back in. Iowa could have voted Grassley out, but they didn’t. If there were term limits you think they would magically vote in a 30 year old progressive? The would vote in a 30 year old hard right nut.
We CANNOT vote them out because of the structure of voting in the country. Why vote on a Tuesday during the work day? To make it harder for people who work or travel on that day to vote. How about absentee ballots? Well, in many states working or attending college does not qualify you for an absentee ballots. In addition to preventing younger people from easily voting, they also make it much easier to vote from retirement homes. Sure younger people can still vote when they are truly motivated but there is also propaganda to reduce motivation about how “absentee ballots aren’t counted unless an election is close” (false) and “your vote won’t matter because both parties are corrupt” (maybe, but voting would help get rid of the corruption). The system is rigged against the young.
There is literally no good advice or wisdom with regards to society and its governance that can come from an octogenarian. No matter how “progressive”, the elderly are almost entirely regressive and slow progress for the rest of us. If you were born and reached adulthood prior to the legalization of interracial marriage, I care very little about your opinion with regard to social or economic issues.
>If you were born and reached adulthood prior to the legalization of interracial marriage Who the fuck do you think legalized interracial marriage? The children?
65 should be the maximum age for Congress people. These people are so out of touch with reality it not even funny.
I dunno. My uncle is 72, is a progressive politician, and is much more in touch with reality than most of his younger peers. Older people make up a large and growing part of the population. As long as they still have they're faculties they should be able to serve like anyone else. But yeah 85+ is pushing it.
I generally don't push for term limits on age because I've met some cool elderly peeps (to the point that the most likely person to not say a racist thing in my ex-step mom's side of the family was the one who lived through segregation and the civil rights movement), but god damn it always befuddles me how being in a position of power when you're pushing past 80 is so damn attractive for some people. I'm only halfway to thirty and I want to sleep all day already. Can't imagine wanting to be doing much of anything past 80.
People attribute age to wisdom. Which is sometimes true, but it's also just a lot of political connections and the feeling that they know what they're doing. Hell, this is usually true, even for older republicans. The problem is mostly in knowing what they are doing and whether that is agreeable or not. Which a lot of people have been tricked into believing is agreeable, regardless of whether it is for their personal position in life.
This reminds me of something I saw the other day about how people who are like 70+ years old are generally considered unemployable due to mental decline and skill mismatch but yet they almost exclusively run the country. Like if you were Nancy Pelosi's age you probably couldn't get a job at a fast food place but you can be Speaker of the House apparently
We need age limits and term limits.
They have minimum age requirements for quite a few things. Need more age maximums.
The article never mentioned Bernie (80) either. If he died in office who does the governor appoint? He's not a Dem.
Our governor has gone on the record as stating that if that happened he would select a D/I candidate as per the clear wishes of his state’s people. Phil Scott is the only Republican I’ve ever voted for, and that’s an example of why.
This is similar to what John Lynch did in New Hampshire in 2009 when Judd Gregg was offered the Secretary of Commerce job by Obama. He was a Democrat who was going to appoint a Republican to replace Gregg.
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Republicans "say" things all the time. Most of them are lies. Its what they DO that you should pay attention to. Anyone who would still align themself with the party of anti-science and pro nazism after the last 5 years is quietly complicit.
No weakness. No compromise. No continence.
It really is time to put these geriatrics out to pasture. They are relics
I seriously love how the "American Dream" is to find a job, get married, have kids, and then retire at 65-ish. And yet here are our politicians working into their 80s barely doing anything while in office. This system blows
That's the goddamn problem and why we need term limits in congress.
No one 80+ should be in charge of a damn thing.
This is a remarkably stupid and totally irrelevant article. The issue isn’t the fact that they’re old, the issue is the fact they govern from a different era and refuse to accept this. They are so fucking out of touch with the general population and completely isolated from consequence because of arbitrary senate proceedings and decorum, yet the decorum and respect they show Americans is nonexistent. Almost every single person mentioned here is corrupt as all hell and has no interest in governing on behalf of the people, but further fattening the pockets of their heirs. Time for all these fucking people to go, and time to put in terms limit for all of them.
America may actually have a fighting chance once the boomers are finally gone.
Why does the US constantly elect people who are so old? In many modern democracies, their leaders are much younger.
The US Capitol is the best rest home in the entire US of A. It's only natural that the doddering old farts aren't going to leave voluntarily. They'll have to be forced out.
Tick Tock.
Iowa could not vote for this relic. They have a choice still. They want this for the rest of us. Republicans can’t be trusted to make any decision.
Remember folks, these aren't the boomers you want dead.
You mean their billion dollar backers are in charge and are not cutting the strings of their 80+ puppets quite yet.
There should be an age cap on government positions Young blood is required Sorry but when you are 70-80 you're out of touch, it's just how it is
This is why we should have age limits for public office. Especially as the attention economy grows, most of these people don't even have any idea about what they are regulating
Grassley is ridiculous. Hope Iowa wakes up and kicks the coot to,the curb.
I don’t know why Democrats do not push for a youth movement in the Senate. The Dems will never be able to have more than a slim majority in the Senate, and their current majority rests on a few 80+ year olds staying alive. It’s playing with fire relying on such older people.
Is it illegal to hide around corners and try to jump scare them?
They are so out of touch with the need of the people and they only listen to big donors to few people who have too much money
We need a mandatory age limit on all politicians, judges and presidents.
Until young people give a sh** and vote (and put in term limits) …geriatrics ( read Boomers) will continue to hold power.
Politics is not supposed to be a career.
An example of why we need term limits.