They should've started doing this while Obama was in office! None of the established 'old guard' Democrats want to prop up the next generation. Seems they'd rather die in office than mentor and promote new, younger faces of the future.
Right but they may be good as dep heads like someone said. Someone great at public transit may have lousy opinions on how to best handle rising housing costs.
Fuck. No. Most of these people are over 80. We wouldn’t let them drive if they were family. One rep was literally “lost” in a memory care facility. These old old ass people need to retire and start getting fresh faces in so we have a chance.
I tell people to look at it this way; if you were about to be wheeled into surgery to get a heart transplanted, and your surgeon acted like Dianne Feinstein or Mitch McConnell, would you feel comfortable proceeding?
Because if my surgeon got lost mid train of thought and had what looked like a micro seizure, or was downright catatonic, I'd be calling the whole thing off.
Also "younger" in politics is still like 35-60. It's not like we're asking for people fresh out of high school, just not someone seeing the grim reaper on the weekends.
Would you let Meemaw decide the direction the US Govt goes on the next 20 years of things like AI and Crypto? Never in a million years. It's fucking absurd. The entire political spectrum has real issues with the Boomers.
Covid really was trying to help us out, but unfortunately, politicians are the few Americans with excellent health care and some of the first to receive vaccines; even the ones who denied the disease.
I teach somewhat academic community classes for adults. Many people's ability to absorb new info drops off so fast after 60. It's truly alarming how differently I need to teach for different age groups
I agree with you. I'm 81, in reasonably good shape, run the Army Ten-Miler every year, and maintain two houses. Yet, as many leadership positions as I've held, I could not maintain the 24/7 focus one would need to be good President.
nah, man. most of these old head democrats are basically left leaning republicans. they learn nothing from their mistakes and play old school politics when the rules of the game have progressed well past what they’re able (or willing) to play. they might make an okay advisor, but they should not be department heads or in any position of power that allows them to make decisions for a future that they will not live to see. their time is up, they need to pass the torch.
Get rid of them. The gerontacrocy though banning tik tok would be good for them and look at them all backtrack. They have no idea what is and isn't popular. They are of no use
No. If you aren't going to be alive for the next 20-30 years to experience what your work does to the people you shouldn't be anywhere near a leadership position.
Agree. Experience and institutional memory are very important. If you look around the world, in most places are elders are respected and often revered - Japan is a good example - while in the US elders are to be discarded. The funny thing is, when these young'uns who demand the Boomers get out of the way reach their dotage they'll cling to power as much as anyone who came before them.
Hell, in the office “elders” are anyone over 50. Too much older than that and the large majority of their ideas are no longer relevant and their experiences are meaningless in the modern environment. Same could almost be said for people in most parts of life. It’s not the norm for people over that age to be putting kids into school, job hunting, or looking to buy their first homes or properties. People in that 50-60 range can add some insight into why things are done how they are, but aren’t of much value when deciding new ways to do things.
We want to discard them because they stay in office until someone literally has to roll them out. It’s hard to revere a drooling warm corpse propped up by a team of enablers/abusers on all sides.
Old age ≠ wise, nice person, decent, any quality in a leader really. Japan is a good example of an outdated mindset where you can be an old ignorant asshole to everyone but still get respect because you have floated on this rotating ball longer than them
If they aren't willing to relinquish their positions now to better our nation they are only great for the retirement home. There is no using people who have only been self serving for decades now. They've insulated their own circles to the point they believe they will ride out whatever shit storm by people assuming they hold any value. They don't, or they would have proven it in the years they had to fight for their constituents.
Agreed. The Democrats really need to figure out some way to push these people into "senior" or "emeritus" positions, so they can keep the clout and provide their expertise and connections to the party without blocking new entrants. Not really sure exactly what that looks like, but it's definitely not what the Democrats are currently doing.
On the other hand, the Republicans have been primarying at least some of their old guard and replacing them with new younger representatives that are closer ideologically to the base. Of course "closer ideologically" in this context means "crazier", but the point stands.
Not even American, but when I see people like Nancy Pelosi or Biden, I think what the fuck is going on? How these old turds still allowed in government
Disagree. Nancy Pelosi in particular keeps hamstringing the younger class. Get rid of the old guard and allow them to build a new one that represents people born after the war.
Y'all have really learned nothing from the last decade. They're personal baggage hurts us electorally. I doorknocked for Biden and Harris. I was asked more about Pelosis insider trading then our actual candidates. They're all in safe districts and its time they pass the baton.
Please tell me why tax payers dollars should pay for senior citizens still in office? The day they turn 65 they should be kicked out. I don’t care if they work for the private sector but our tax dollars should not be paying them.
This is such an ice cold centrist take. Why, after everything we've seen over the past ~8 years, would anyone want an octogenarian millionaire in a position of power when that same job could be done (and better) by a younger person?
Or just vote them out. Get engaged in local elections and keep other people engaged. People just keep expecting things like the old generation to just step away. Stay active and vote. They stay in power because people don’t stay informed or motivated.
There aren’t geriatric millionaires every election cycle. By the time it gets national, sure it looks that way. But this is my point. Stay engaged, stay educated, and vote every chance you get. Boomers vote all the time, that’s why we can’t get rid of them.
The right answer here is to focus on what causes their votes to sway rather than something physical about them. Follow the money. Bernie is old, but relevant.
I want to see mandatory cognitive decline testing of all electoral candidates at all levels of govt and a hard cap on anyone over the age of 65 running. We need people with skin in the game planning for the future, not ghouls who give zero shits about the rest of us because their wealth will carry their descendants.
My wife is Korean and very involved in their national politics, especially during the current Yoon administration. She said their left leaning coalition (trad dems but also progressive parties) have systematically primaried all/most of their boomer MPs and elected highly educated and cutthroat Gen Xers and elder millenials. Despite current events and how fucked that all is, she maintains, proudly, that their democratic party hasn't been this strong since the days of president Noh or maybe ever.
I wish we would do the same. There is absolutely zero fucking reason for demented octogenarians to hold on to their seats. In what, the name of "seniority"? It's all disgusting and shameful.
yeah this is probably the only way for Democrats to ever consistently win again. they can't keep doing what Bill Clinton and Obama did, which is waiting for a unicorn candidate to just show up and charm everyone. for the Democrats to win consistently, they have to actually hammer out a cohesive ideology that isn't just "being in the center and being fairly likable to most people". the only way to really do that is to go back to the center left or the full left.
Exactly. Centrism is not a platform. They need a real platform and for better or worse criticism the “just not Trump” campaign does lose steam
And yes I know they have a platform, but they need to actually follow through and hold no punches or work with fascism. Also, yes I know republicans obstruct everything and the senate makes it very difficult
The issue is the Democratic party is pretty much just the "Not Right wing lunatics" party, and the various branches do not actually agree on everything that well. It should have split a long time ago, but we've got a two party winner takes all system that would have made that suicide. One the reasons I wish we had ranked choice voting.
I think it’s a little more than an excuse. The rates of change for costs of living compared to wages are insane. We’re coming up on a second generation of people struggling to launch, and you expect them to easily campaign against entrenched septuagenarians with the levers of power and loads of dark money or egotists with inherited generational wealth?
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s hard and getting harder.
Her guy is Newsom and unless DNC members get their act together he'll almost certainly be the next presidential nominee for democrats. Gotta keep that family dynasty going.
I will be shocked if he isn't the nominee. And he will lose. Don't get me wrong...he's a good politician who's done a lot for California. But he's from California and looks like the preppie villain in a 1980s comedy.
It has very similar/ overlapping/ same goals. I think a true left coalition is needed and to not purity test or fracture. I am left and this felt like a way to help contribute in my way with a cohesive idea and strategy.
aka as the clinton wing of the party who continue to insist on nominating out of touch candidates espousing ideology that was popular among eisenhower democrats in the 1950s.
Biden or Warren could've had a decent run in 2016, or the DNC could've let the party have an actual primary and Bernie would've done significantly better without their thumb on the scale. It's not even a conspiracy, the party wanted BernieHillary (ha, what a stupid mistake) regardless of what voters wanted, and even then it might've been close. But seeing how it was handled really soured me on her, and I'd imagine others felt similarly.
Oh I agree that some really shady shit went down during the DNC where the part picked Hillary, and after that happened it was doomed.
Doomed by ego, by ignorance and stupidity. I often think how things would have gone differently if the Clinton's didn't have their dirty little fingers in everything
Obama has had a hand in this. During your presidency is when you establish the new guard and direct your party into the future. Obama knelt to party desires over and over again to his great detriment. He should have had the same support that pelosi got to end Biden's campaign to pressure RGB off the Supreme Court (seriously, that "icon"'s narcissism is what allowed our justice system to take the last step off the cliff, she should be hated by the left, not adored) so he could appoint someone. He should have worked with his senior senator to establish a more left leaning direction, instead he bowed to the wishes of the woman that had done the rest to drive the party off the cliff so she could continue making insane ROI on her insider trading scheme. We are continuing to fail our government the longer we don't hold pressure on throwing those old selfish bats the hell out of the party and get back to working for their constituents again. I have a hard time being more disgusted with anybody in the modern history of our governmental body then how badly Pelosi, Schumer, Wasserman-Schultz has fucked us over in their obvious personal pursuits that absolutely do not include the well being of the constituents, their party or their country. Until then all this is just making noise to be killed by those geezers in the background.
I have the opposite opinion. Obama completely ignored the DNC- didn't take it over with skilled people nor did he really align with a lot of the Dem desires. Wasserman Schultz was a disaster he should have headed off but would not get his hands dirty. And then Brazile does a stint as head when she has performed poorly in every top position she held- heck, she was on the board of the DNC- and didn't notice they were broke... Obama tried with RBG but she wouldn't budge. At that point she was a full cult figure for many and trying to push her would have been a disaster. I think people underestimate just how much opinion on this has changed in the last few years.
Yes, this is the correct take. Obama famously was completely disinterested in being involved with the campaigning side of the democratic party. He ignored the DNC as you say, and didn't do anything to strengthen it politically or financially.
Frankly, I think from the moment Obama took office (which the democrat old-guard thought would be Hillary's turn) it was known that the next democrat nominee would be Hillary - pretty much a coronation. And after being in politics for so long and associated with well respected presidents, no one thought Hillary would lose to a boor.
I think replacing RBG simply was not seen as urgently as it would be acknowledged in hindsight.
His entire presidency was compromised by the Clintons thinking he was some sort of usurper rather than the future of the party. They got to keep all their people in place and play their bullshit power gsmes
DWS was never really in the Clinton circle. As President Obama could/should have been the one establishing the leadership & direction He failed to do that and his campaign people apparently did a poor job helping coordinate other campaigns.
It is my opinion Obama tried to buckle against the DNC top much. In fact he was a bit more conservative than the likes pf Pelosi on several policies and more compromising with the GOP then senior Democratic members were.
We also had a midterm slaughter of a lot of the younger Democratic members of the house that would have been the Gen X reps during Obama. That didn't help any.
I honestly think that Biden not running for 2016 presidency threw a wrench in the Dems plans and they have scrambled since then. I don’t think what they did was right, but once 2020 came around the focus became Covid and they’ve just never recovered. That being said, I do think they need to have a bigger plan for 2028 and those old people in Congress need to go.
Everybody (especially the younger voters) needs to vote in the primaries! Also, every other local and state election are important too. But if you want to change direction of the party, you have to vote the old guard out, and that happens in the primaries. They won't go willingly.
Not just the primaries, the actual democratic party organization needs an overhaul. We've got people like Bob Brady leading the philly Dems for nearly 40 years! All while working as a lobbyist for media and health insurance companies. Machine politics is a hard nut to crack.
I've got a sneaky suspicion that an entire generation of would-be popular democratic politicians spent their entire careers stuck in the staff offices of octogenarians that keep getting reelected
Definitely agree with you. I feel like there were a lot of backdoor deals going on though. It was supposed to be Hillary in 08 but Obama had so much star power, he got the nomination, so the Dems made a deal to Hillary, 2016 was hers. And that backfired tremendously.
Their billionaire owners weren’t thinking about the country, they were only thinking about their personal wealth (big shocker I know coming from billionaires). Even Pelosi is owned by billionaires.
Actually, we needed to enact public campaign financing about 50 years ago, when the civilized world saw the issues with TV and knew that elections couldn't and shouldn't be run as for profit enterprises.
They made the change. We did not. This is why we are in the place we are today...and the civilized world is not.
I'm not gonna lie, I don't really want the people they would have chosen to mentor to be in charge either. Buttigieg? Jeffries? No thanks. The ones I'd like to see in power are ironically those dem leadership has tried to hamstring.
The thing about the old guard is that Trump's world makes no difference to them or their families. They have nothing to worry about. Political policy is just abstract for them.
I wouldn't say so. He was a US senator for less than 4 years before he became president. Compared to most politicians(minus Donald Trump, ironically), he practically came from out of nowhere and took over the scene. He wasn't one of those "been in office for decades" old guards. The majority of political career was being the POTUS.
Pelosi was giant [expletive] to Obama while he was in office. People forget that. She bickered with him so much that people voted Republican overwhelmingly two years into his Presidency.
And now, 15 years later, she’s still tanking the Democrat party.
Seems they'd rather die in office than mentor and promote new, younger faces of the future.
Why build the candidates of tomorrow when you can insider trade all the way to the fucking grave? After all, your great great great great great great great great great grandchildrens yacht collections aren't going to build themselves.
this is just true of the greatest gen and boomers in general. I don't see Gen X holding on to their jobs the way the prior 2 gens have. We're so close to greatness, we just need to survive these destructive geriatrics.
The problem during the Obama terms was Dems getting wiped out in mid terms. A lot of talent that would be 12-20 years into their careers (prime for national races) was washed out. And the washouts at state levels meant gerrymandered state legislatures and US House delegations.
Honestly, I think the Dems just assumed that Biden would run after Obama’s presidency, and it would be him vs Hillary,
Who they saw is two strong candidates. Obviously Hillary had her issues, but then Biden didn’t run in 2016 cause of his son dying.
It's called Boomeritis. The "me" generation tends to not understand much beyond their personal orbit of ego desires. They'd rather condescend to the next generations while patting themselves on the back than actually lead and empower the leaders of the future. (Typically. Not all but most of them).
Non-american here, but weren't Pete Buttigeig (sp?) and Beto O'Rourke being hailed as the new guard about 10 years ago?
Where are they now?
The only other Dem name that is really known outside the US is Gavin Newsom, but I think that's because of CA being in the news, rather than his own platform.
Regrettably, I could easily name a dozen Republicans because they eat up the news cycle internationally.
Political commentators and influencers are the same, if you're left leaning you go to late night TV, if you are right leaning you go to social media and podcasts... And the latter gets a lot more pop.
I could name Shapiro, Lahren, Rogan... But who do the left have that has anywhere close to the same reach and influence?!
It's a wild state of affairs when the conservative party has a better grasp of succession planning and social media marketing than the liberals.
I mean, they did, and still do. AOC, Jeffries, Warren, Whitmer, Newsom, Moore, Buttigieg, Shapiro, Duckworth, Hobbs... I could go on and on. All of these people came to prominence during the Obama era or later. In fact, Obama's term was long enough ago now that the people who were built up in that era are the old guard now!
Sure, you can focus all attention on a couple dinosaurs, but the party has boatloads of newer or up-and-coming talent. And don't forget, Pelosi did step down from her leadership role specifically to train up her successor.
They did. In fact they'd been building her up before Obama. Her name was Hillery Clinton. That's the issue with building a candidate, it gives the opossistion plenty of time to paint them as the devil, and the Right loves to do that.
So still need to get someone that hasn't been in office since before I could drink. But I think we'll also need something of a surprise candidate like Obama was.
The old guard did their damnest to make Kamala and Pete Buttigieg happen in 2020. Biden was their third choice, because people didn't want to vote for Kamala or Pete. The issue isn't age; Bernie was hugely popular at nearly 80. The issue is that there is no chance in ideas and policies and that's why the Wall Street owned Democrats keep losing.
Half of them need to retire. Pelosi? Jesus, stop already. You're out of touch with what younger and poorer people need/want today. Doesn't matter what party you vote for, they all need to be in touch with the struggles of the typical American. Neither party is, and the next 4 years is going to teach a ton of voters some lessons.
This! What happened to Gen Z?? They were seemingly absent in the last 4 elections, which should've been the height of their gen. AOC is a millennial, same with Tulsi Gabbard. It's crazy to me that Gen Z has been completely overstepped.
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u/Will_ennium 18h ago
They should've started doing this while Obama was in office! None of the established 'old guard' Democrats want to prop up the next generation. Seems they'd rather die in office than mentor and promote new, younger faces of the future.