Like you all seem to be approaching this like the presidential election is some kind of meritocratic thing where the best candidate is found organically via performance excellence and then chosen by the electorate.
That’s not actually how our system works though. Our presidential elections are a system of back room deals, money, and celebrity. Operating as though our system is some kind of aspirational meritocracy is naive.
Like you guys seem to think anyone can credibly run for president. We can’t. There’s already extensive control systems to prevent that and the only thing that can upset those systems making all the choices of who we’re electing for us is the rogue candidate already being rich and famous before they enter the party and destroy the plan they had.
I'm not saying it's easy, but there are lots of 'ordinary' people involved in politics.
Barack Obama was a one term senator who became president; before that he was a state senator, and a writer/professor. AOC was working in a restaurant and as a local organizer before running for congress.
Now, they are both obviously very charismatic and most importantly, prodigious fundraisers. But this idea that only people pre-selected by the party machine make it through is false.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Feinstein's deteriorating faculties could have been covered up in 2018. A PR team back then would have hidden Feinstein's private slip ups from the press so voters were only seeing the candidates at their best. Correct me if I'm wrong but Feinstein started repeating herself and forgetting vote outcomes around 2022.
There shouldn’t be age limits at all but maybe every congressperson should have to take a basic cognitive evaluation every term and after any neurological injury
What happens if a congressperson fails an evaluation? Are they ejected from power? Are the results made public?
There shouldn’t be age limits at all but maybe every congressperson should have to take a basic cognitive evaluation every term and after any neurological injury
I feel like this goes really gross places really quickly.
Someone or some group of someone needs to determine what tests / evaluation are given, and what criteria needs to be met for someone to be eligible for office.
And honestly, if someone with Downs runs on a platform of disability rights, or a veteran who suffered a TBI and runs on supporting the VA / injured soldiers should they be disqualified from office for those reasons? If they find the votes of people who want them to represent their interests I don't see any reason to disqualify them.
Then we can start getting into disorders like depression, anxiety, or addiction. Those can all have a bigger impact on someone's fitness in office than age. Keep in mind that homosexuality was classified in form or another as a mental disorder through DSM-5 in...2013. Even something like ADD or dyslexia can potentially make it difficult for a person to do their job in office.
Salient points: 900,000 18-24yr old voters participated. As a group, they represented less than 30% of the total vote count.
13 million total votes were cast.
In her last Senate race Feinstein beat Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, by about a million votes. In 2018 he was 52 and she was 85.
If young people in California wanted to elect someone who wasn't already very very old, they could easily have done so by themselves. There were more than double the necessary votes to unseat Feinstein available, and those youth voters simply did not show up to cast them.
In 2018!
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
To clarify, I'm not really horrified by ageism. At least, not ageism in the way this thread understands it.
Where ageism is relevant, it's the second, often underappreciated, form of ageism also relevant to this thread: ageism against the young. As I mentioned upthread, voter suppression against minorities also affects youth and that youth are more vulnerable to voter suppression efforts than adults. (I used to have a citation in my notes that showed that youth participation in elections was a strong proxy across countries for other minority enfranchisement, but I can't find it now. IIRC 'youth' was defined as ages 16-24, because Austria allows voting at 16.)
I admit that I can't conclusively prove right now that an electoral system that systematically advantages older voters and systematically disadvantages younger voters leads to similar advantages for older candidates and disadvantages for younger candidates, but it's pretty damn plausible.
The same strategies that help minorities vote also help youth: either abolishing voter ID laws or establishing a free national ID card, early voting, mail-in voting, more polling places, easier or automatic registration, work holidays on election day. These strategies can be implemented on the local and state level, and can be facilitated by volunteers & activists. Whereas an upper limit on age for national office would require a constitutional convention.
If you believe that the system is so broken that we can't meaningfully effect change via electoralism, then I sympathize. But calling for a reform that would require a constitutional convention is a non-starter in that game's ruleset. But let's not be fatalist, let's say that you could. What would it take?
You'd need to mobilize activists and voters anyway, who through the very nature of the issue are going to trend younger than the average voter. They'll need to be motivated by dissatisfaction with entrenched incumbents. If you can mobilize enough of them, and get them empowered enough, you can take on those incumbents directly.
This also means that from a matter of principle, you can protect democracy by expanding it, rather than restricting it. We should always be looking for opportunities to get more people involved in democratic processes, and to improve those processes to be more inclusive towards all people.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
There are concerted efforts to drive down youth votes, make voting harder, and to generally make youths feel like their opinion doesn't and shouldn't matter.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Basic cognitive tests are already standardized by qualified medical boards and are purely in place to measure baseline cognitive function, not intelligence.
They test to ensure the person is not injured or disabled beyond an ability to properly communicate or care for themselves and understand their relationship with gravity.
It screens for dementia and strokes, not ASD or Down’s syndrome
It’s the kind of thing you want to have so you don’t get Feinstein situations
Basic cognitive tests are already standardized by qualified medical boards and are purely in place to measure baseline cognitive function, not intelligence.
They test to ensure the person is not injured or disabled beyond an ability to properly communicate or care for themselves and understand their relationship with gravity.
It screens for dementia and strokes, not ASD or Down’s syndrome
It’s the kind of thing you want to have so you don’t get Feinstein situations
I think that's a more reasonable standard / expectation for people in office than a blanket Logans Run policy for the olds, but in my experience it's hard even for people suffering fairly serious cognitive decline to be determined incapable. Even when the person being made a ward is agreeable to it or wants it, the cases I've seen the courts are generally very reluctant to approve it outside serious and obvious cases.
It may or may not (probably would have IMO) screened out Feinstein, but it honestly feels like that is such an exceptional outlier of a case even among geriatric politicians that it seems like a lot for a pretty rare situation.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Basic cognitive tests are already standardized by qualified medical boards and are purely in place to measure baseline cognitive function, not intelligence.
They test to ensure the person is not injured or disabled beyond an ability to properly communicate or care for themselves and understand their relationship with gravity.
It screens for dementia and strokes, not ASD or Down’s syndrome
It’s the kind of thing you want to have so you don’t get Feinstein situations
I think that's a more reasonable standard / expectation for people in office than a blanket Logans Run policy for the olds, but in my experience it's hard even for people suffering fairly serious cognitive decline to be determined incapable. Even when the person being made a ward is agreeable to it or wants it, the cases I've seen the courts are generally very reluctant to approve it outside serious and obvious cases.
It may or may not (probably would have IMO) screened out Feinstein, but it honestly feels like that is such an exceptional outlier of a case even among geriatric politicians that it seems like a lot for a pretty rare situation.
I would hope any case of an elected politician being examined for removal due to mental capacity would be an outlier, so I’m not sure that’s a sufficient reason to not employ such a safeguard
Like you all seem to be approaching this like the presidential election is some kind of meritocratic thing where the best candidate is found organically via performance excellence and then chosen by the electorate.
That’s not actually how our system works though. Our presidential elections are a system of back room deals, money, and celebrity. Operating as though our system is some kind of aspirational meritocracy is naive.
Like you guys seem to think anyone can credibly run for president. We can’t. There’s already extensive control systems to prevent that and the only thing that can upset those systems making all the choices of who we’re electing for us is the rogue candidate already being rich and famous before they enter the party and destroy the plan they had.
I'm not saying it's easy, but there are lots of 'ordinary' people involved in politics.
Barack Obama was a one term senator who became president; before that he was a state senator, and a writer/professor. AOC was working in a restaurant and as a local organizer before running for congress.
Now, they are both obviously very charismatic and most importantly, prodigious fundraisers. But this idea that only people pre-selected by the party machine make it through is false.
Barack was Chicago Dems, and he got that senate spot by not abusing Jeri Ryan. You see there was a good chance Barack wouldn’t get that senate seat because his Republican opponent was endorsed by the former Republican senator that was well liked. However less than 3 months before the general election that guy, Jack Ryan, had his divorce proceedings unsealed and his abuse of Jeri Ryan (yes 7 of 9) was bad enough that the republicans made him ditch the candidacy (ah simpler times) and then they brought in a carpet bagger from Maryland to try and stop Barack. Which failed. Again you didn’t choose this candidate, they did not show up organically. They showed up because of the large party systems driving all of this.
AOC happened due to the hubris of the Democratic party not thinking they needed to concentrate on defending against this upstart in a pretty much totally safe district, and she was an able master of internet celebrity in her initial candidacy. Again it wasn’t due to merit. It was due to a strategic failure in the back room dealings of the Democratic Party. Who’s done their best to make sure her situation doesn’t happen again.
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Option 3: youth voting is systematically suppressed. More on that in a minute.
The famously Democratic youth vote. In California. Is being suppressed - i.e. there's somebody out there actively trying to stop young voters from registering?
Salient points: 900,000 18-24yr old voters participated. As a group, they represented less than 30% of the total vote count.
13 million total votes were cast.
In her last Senate race Feinstein beat Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, by about a million votes. In 2018 he was 52 and she was 85.
If young people in California wanted to elect someone who wasn't already very very old, they could easily have done so by themselves. There were more than double the necessary votes to unseat Feinstein available, and those youth voters simply did not show up to cast them.
In 2018!
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
Voting is way easier and cheaper than getting tickets to the Eras tour and yet somehow...
edit: 18-24 is a big range and I don't think making excuses like "they're busy with college or living on their own for the first time" is really fair for a population who demonstrates the agency required to be busy in college or living on their own. Can I just say that we had two children by that age? I was holding down a job, helping raise two kids, and still voting. And sure it WAS the 90s so maybe voting has just gotten a lot harder since then! Citation needed...
Like the amount by which we are not just choosing among the best options and instead choosing between the options the parties let us vote for shouldn’t be that hard to accept after 2016.
If you think these systems are giving you a choice among all options instead of the options they let be possible you’re not paying attention to how it’s actually playing out.
Like one of the ways difi stayed in power is she just never acknowledged she had competitors for like decades. She wouldn’t engage them at all for debate or anything, and because the party and media engagement apparatus totally had her back it was very hard to know she was even getting primaried, and because it means being entirely oppositional to the entire Democratic Party machine very few people with any personal aspirations would risk taking her on, because it would basically mean being excommunicado from the Democratic Party after trying. Which is also why a bunch of her competitors have been not great, cause you gotta be kinda wacko to try and take that on.
Like everyone’s trying to say there should be no limits, anyone should be able to run let the electorate decide, but that’s not our reality. There are already massive systems of control over this and they are entirely undocumented and ungoverned. Writing down one rule that those control systems have to follow isn’t a big change to the availability of credibly running for the presidency. That’s already fully curtailed by mostly faceless organizations we have little if any direct control of. Acting like this isn’t where we live helps no one.
In 2023, WA state had 12.7% turnout from registered voters between 18-24. It's a little bit higher for the next age band, 25-34. (Ref: a very hideous PDF link.) It is FOUR TIMES higher for the top-end age band, 65+.
We literally mail everyone a ballot weeks ahead, said ballot not even requiring a stamp.
Salient points: 900,000 18-24yr old voters participated. As a group, they represented less than 30% of the total vote count.
13 million total votes were cast.
In her last Senate race Feinstein beat Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, by about a million votes. In 2018 he was 52 and she was 85.
If young people in California wanted to elect someone who wasn't already very very old, they could easily have done so by themselves. There were more than double the necessary votes to unseat Feinstein available, and those youth voters simply did not show up to cast them.
In 2018!
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
Voting is way easier and cheaper than getting tickets to the Eras tour and yet somehow...
edit: 18-24 is a big range and I don't think making excuses like "they're busy with college or living on their own for the first time" is really fair for a population who demonstrates the agency required to be busy in college or living on their own.
Can I just say that we had two children by that age? I was holding down a job, helping raise two kids, and still voting. And sure it WAS the 90s so maybe voting has just gotten a lot harder since then! Citation needed...
The other facet is that candidates don't offer anything that young voters care about. The issues that rank highest with youth voters are ignored by the candidates
Thinking about it... the issue of having people with declining mental ability due to age in office is more of a consequence of the underlying problem of people in power clinging on for dear life.
Forcing them out at 70 or whatever isn't just a matter of the infirmities of age. It's also just that frankly, it doesn't seem like they're going to let anyone else take the seat until the reaper takes them. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that even if they're still thinking clearly, there's an age past which people have no business running things, between not having to face the consequences, the tendency for mindsets to ossify as people age, etc. I'd also argue that a long time in power tends to invite corruption and such (and I'd also argue that clinging to power is a sign that they've been corrupted by it anyways, but).
Older congresspeople etc. should absolutely be identifying their replacements and making plans to step down, and it just doesn't seem to happen. So in effect, an age limit is in large part a proposal to force them to do that - by saying they can't just keep clinging on until they die.
I don't think it's good to focus entirely on declining cognition in old age as the sole reason to give them the boot - there's plenty of reasons beyond that to think the elderly shouldn't be in charge.
Salient points: 900,000 18-24yr old voters participated. As a group, they represented less than 30% of the total vote count.
13 million total votes were cast.
In her last Senate race Feinstein beat Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, by about a million votes. In 2018 he was 52 and she was 85.
If young people in California wanted to elect someone who wasn't already very very old, they could easily have done so by themselves. There were more than double the necessary votes to unseat Feinstein available, and those youth voters simply did not show up to cast them.
In 2018!
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
Voting is way easier and cheaper than getting tickets to the Eras tour and yet somehow...
edit: 18-24 is a big range and I don't think making excuses like "they're busy with college or living on their own for the first time" is really fair for a population who demonstrates the agency required to be busy in college or living on their own.
Can I just say that we had two children by that age? I was holding down a job, helping raise two kids, and still voting. And sure it WAS the 90s so maybe voting has just gotten a lot harder since then! Citation needed...
The other facet is that candidates don't offer anything that young voters care about. The issues that rank highest with youth voters are ignored by the candidates
This is an argument that age is not something youth voters care about. You're making my point for me.
Salient points: 900,000 18-24yr old voters participated. As a group, they represented less than 30% of the total vote count.
13 million total votes were cast.
In her last Senate race Feinstein beat Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, by about a million votes. In 2018 he was 52 and she was 85.
If young people in California wanted to elect someone who wasn't already very very old, they could easily have done so by themselves. There were more than double the necessary votes to unseat Feinstein available, and those youth voters simply did not show up to cast them.
In 2018!
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
Voting is way easier and cheaper than getting tickets to the Eras tour and yet somehow...
edit: 18-24 is a big range and I don't think making excuses like "they're busy with college or living on their own for the first time" is really fair for a population who demonstrates the agency required to be busy in college or living on their own.
Can I just say that we had two children by that age? I was holding down a job, helping raise two kids, and still voting. And sure it WAS the 90s so maybe voting has just gotten a lot harder since then! Citation needed...
The other facet is that candidates don't offer anything that young voters care about. The issues that rank highest with youth voters are ignored by the candidates
That doesn't matter. If X, Y, Z are running for office, one of those options will reach office. It doesn't matter if none of them have mentioned Zork, Pogs (POGs? I can't remember. MUST BE MENTAL DECLINE!), or Alf; one of them will be the office-holder. Don't like X, Y or Z? RUN. There's usually some 20-something on the ballot up here for city council or the like; I mean they're usually a semi-literate dipshit or an absolute turdweasel libertarian, but they managed to figure it out, even if their campaign email is a fuckin' gmail address. Sometimes they're not a dipshit and they win!
But, lacking a non-X/Y/Z candidate, you pick the best/closest fit to your preferences from those running, then try to get them to care about your personal pet project. Maybe it's transit, maybe it's a pothole, maybe it's a dearth of payphones in the downtown core. Hell, maybe they're running for their own personal reasons, 'cause nobody cared about what they wanted. (It was Alf.)
I will admit to being eternally salty that Beto didn't beat Ted Cruz in that same election year (2018) when there were about 4x as many youth votes available to get rid of the bastard than showed up to do it, and the vote was so close that they unquestionably could have swung it. 219,000 votes! Millions of young Texans didn't show up! Beto in the Senate in 2018 means it's 51-49 Dems in 2020. Sinema becomes irrelevant, the entire political landscape changes. In 2022 it goes 52-48, Manchin becomes irrelevant too, maybe we don't even have a filibuster anymore.
Also, just to continue driving the point home here.
California's awful youth voter participation in 2018 was a huge increase. Triple the number! Texas had a gigantic increase! From 8% to over 25%! And they're both still garbage both in absolute numbers and compared to other age groups.
Conclusion: Youth voters either hated de Leon, or didn't care enough about how old their Senator was fuel a change.
Feinstein's deteriorating faculties could have been covered up in 2018. A PR team back then would have hidden Feinstein's private slip ups from the press so voters were only seeing the candidates at their best. Correct me if I'm wrong but Feinstein started repeating herself and forgetting vote outcomes around 2022.
This is an argument that voters don't want incapable people doing the job, not that they don't want old people doing it. It just isn't clear that age was a thing people cared much about in 2018 in California. She was 85 during that race!
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
edited February 13
I wish the options weren't all so godddamned old but I suppose there's just failures at all levels leading there; if old people were so shit then why haven't the new out-competed them (a la Obama telling the DNC he didn't need their fundraising apparatus)
Is this a uniquely American problem? The EU leaders I'm familiar with are old but not 70+
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
edited February 13
Following the age limit argument for the past X years, it strikes me that a lot of the anger at old people in office is born of the belief that boomers are the one thing standing in the way of proper progressive policy, and if we could just get them all to retire or shoot them into the sun, everything would be roses.
Ignoring the fact that gen-Xers are at least as bad.
And also that a lot of the youth that have extremely toxic beliefs.
Generally speaking, solving our problems via age limits world require an age limit of, like, 40. And an age minimum of 25.
I'm with Feral on this one - age limits are rife with problems and don't actually solve any of the underlying ones.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
To be clear here, I wouldn't mind a 75yr, or even a 70yr max age. Let the old person be kingmaker and then play elder statesman, you don't need to be in office to exert influence if that's still your desire. I just don't think it's something that youth voters actually give a shit about.
I think it's GenX voters getting squeezed out of top jobs who care about it.
And I'm not even necessarily against an 18yr term limit for SCOTUS where we start discarding the person sitting the longest, in favor of someone else we think can make it 18 years on the job. You could even do a thing where if you're replacing someone who died then that's your pick in the 2yr block, and nobody else leaves until the next one. This will of course heavily discourage retirement out of cycle and things could get really weird if say all the liberals retire at once.
Like if you manage to be the one 90 year old that’s just as spry and mentally pliable as you were at 35 (oh hey the age when I had to start admitting the decline in the first place) then sorry, not sorry, you’re a freak and our policy shouldn’t be designed around you. Also statistically you’re still probably gonna die within the next 10 years tops.
Like right now one of the best outcomes from our current situation is that nature just does its job and both these guys kick it before the end of the year. Super fun because our system has no fuckin way to deal with that happening after the conventions. Which should be thrown on the pile of reasons why we don’t let this happen
Statistically speaking, all of our presidents have been freaks. They won a 46 out of a billion lottery.
I wish the options weren't all so godddamned old but I suppose there's just failures at all levels leading there; if old people were so shit then why haven't the new out-competed them (a la Obama telling the DNC he didn't need their fundraising apparatus)
Is this a uniquely American problem? The EU leaders I'm familiar with are old but not 70+
I will admit to being eternally salty that Beto didn't beat Ted Cruz in that same election year (2018) when there were about 4x as many youth votes available to get rid of the bastard than showed up to do it, and the vote was so close that they unquestionably could have swung it. 219,000 votes! Millions of young Texans didn't show up! Beto in the Senate in 2018 means it's 51-49 Dems in 2020. Sinema becomes irrelevant, the entire political landscape changes. In 2022 it goes 52-48, Manchin becomes irrelevant too, maybe we don't even have a filibuster anymore.
Also, just to continue driving the point home here.
California's awful youth voter participation in 2018 was a huge increase. Triple the number! Texas had a gigantic increase! From 8% to over 25%! And they're both still garbage both in absolute numbers and compared to other age groups.
Coincidentally, one of my open tabs was also from circle.tufts.edu. I had just closed it, so I fished it out of my browser history when I saw your link.
This new data on youth turnout across the country also underscores some of the key issues, electoral policies, and institutional support that can shape young people’s electoral participation.
Election Laws Help (Or Hurt) Youth Participation
Michigan, which had the highest youth voter turnout in 2022, stands out as a state that has made it easier to register to vote in recent years. The state, which also has online voter registration and same-day registration, implemented automatic voter registration in 2019, and it had the largest increase in the number of youth (ages 18-24) registered to vote between 2018 and 2022.
Data is available for 6 of the 8 states that automatically sent mail-in ballots to all registered voters in 2022. Three of them—Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, all of which have had all vote-by-mail elections since 2014 or earlier—were among the top 7 states with the highest youth turnout in the midterms. Two other states, Vermont and Nevada, ranked in the top 15.
On the other hand, some of the states with low 2022 youth turnout are notable for their lack of facilitative voting and registration policies. Tennessee (13%), Alabama (15%), and Oklahoma (15%) do not have same-day, automatic, or pre-registration. Oklahoma is one of only 10 states in the country without fully online voter registration; Tennessee has a strict photo ID requirement to cast a regular ballot; and Alabama is one of a handful of states that does not offer early, in-person voting. Other states are currently passing restrictive laws: Idaho has banned the use of student IDs as a form of voter identification, and Arkansas has banned ballot drop-off boxes.
A recent analysis from CIRCLE’s post-election youth survey found that young people in states without online registration, automatic registration, or same-day registration were more likely to say they ran out of time or missed the deadline to register to vote.
Regarding California specifically, CA does a lot of things right but what they don't do are automatic voter registration or voter registration through schools. CA has automatic voter registration when you get your driver's license but the number of teenagers getting drivers licenses has been in steady decline for years with only slight bumps here and there. As for voter registration through schools, California actually has a law mandating exactly that, but it's unenforced, unfunded, and ignored.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I wish the options weren't all so godddamned old but I suppose there's just failures at all levels leading there; if old people were so shit then why haven't the new out-competed them (a la Obama telling the DNC he didn't need their fundraising apparatus)
Is this a uniquely American problem? The EU leaders I'm familiar with are old but not 70+
Not really sure. But it kind of feels like the same clique of wealthy and powerful individuals has been around my entire life without much change.
regarding voter registration... my position is that it's a terrible idea altogether. Everybody should be automatically eligible to vote wherever they live, by virtue of being a citizen, with no registration required, in all the elections happening in that voting district.
I wish the options weren't all so godddamned old but I suppose there's just failures at all levels leading there; if old people were so shit then why haven't the new out-competed them (a la Obama telling the DNC he didn't need their fundraising apparatus)
Is this a uniquely American problem? The EU leaders I'm familiar with are old but not 70+
Because the DNC threw away the apparatus that Obama used to motivate voters.
AOC motivated different voters and people to donate to her, but that required a lot of very local work done in an urban area where it's relatively easy to cover the entire district you're representing.
The goal of our society should be to have people work become successful and then retire to enjoy the remainder of their lives.
Deciding to continue to work well into your twilight years is a failure of the society.
I disagree. Being required to work well into your twilight years to survive is a failure of our society. But some people like their work, and want to continue doing it. Lots of very successful actors continue working into old age, because they love what they do.
Limiting someone just because they passed an arbitrary number is either ageism or generationalism. I am perfectly ok with setting additional testing that must be done for older people to engage in dangerous activities, like driving or becoming President. I am not ok with saying "You hit arbitrary mark X, and must now retire." Boomers are already outnumbered by younger generations in the House, and that gap will only continue to widen as time continues its inexorable march forward.
As far as older people wielding the most power, that's an entirely unsurprising consequence of the fact that they've had more time to accumulate power. A professional politician who is 50 will have spent ~30 years accumulating power. At 80, that person will now have had 60 years.
Voter registration is one issue, turnout of registered voters is another. Youth not being registered is a legitimate problem, but if they also, once registered, don't even bother when a ballot literally shows up on their doorstep, accompanied by a stack (local/national/state) of voter pamphlets with full platforms, statements, links to websites, and candidate information including headshots and contact info (and again, 12.7% of registered 18-24 y/o in 2023 in WA) then that's not an issue addressable by easing registration. They are registered, they just can't be arsed in roughly 86% of cases.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldn't run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
How does this square with the current presidential election? You're saying I should vote for Marianne Williamson or whoever ends up running 3rd party?
What do you mean? The candidates* for the parties won* the primaries*. Voters* picked* them over other* candidates*.
ah yes the highly democratic process known as us presidential primaries.... where 3 states vote for whichever candidate the media is force feeding them and then we declare it over
extremely convincing, who can argue with the results!? look how well it is working
The issues with the primary process and political party control are due to our first past the post voting system, not because our political leaders are old.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say Bernie Sanders had won the primary in 2020 and then somehow managed to win the general.
Would we be talking so much about his age? (As a reminder, he’s 82, a year older than Biden)
Do we think he would have voluntarily stepped down after a single term?
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
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regarding voter registration... my position is that it's a terrible idea altogether. Everybody should be automatically eligible to vote wherever they live, by virtue of being a citizen, with no registration required, in all the elections happening in that voting district.
But how do you know someone is a citizen and living in the specific voting district. The problem is that we generally do not have any central database or registry that actually has that information.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldn't run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
How does this square with the current presidential election? You're saying I should vote for Marianne Williamson or whoever ends up running 3rd party?
What do you mean? The candidates* for the parties won* the primaries*. Voters* picked* them over other* candidates*.
ah yes the highly democratic process known as us presidential primaries.... where 3 states vote for whichever candidate the media is force feeding them and then we declare it over
extremely convincing, who can argue with the results!? look how well it is working
The issues with the primary process and political party control are due to our first past the post voting system, not because our political leaders are old.
Democratic primary isn't fptp, though. Candidates are awarded delegates proportionally based on vote share.
Though the winner in each state also gets bonus delegates, and then there's super delegates, so it ain't perfect.
And yeah, the media certainly doesn't help.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
regarding voter registration... my position is that it's a terrible idea altogether. Everybody should be automatically eligible to vote wherever they live, by virtue of being a citizen, with no registration required, in all the elections happening in that voting district.
But how do you know someone is a citizen and living in the specific voting district. The problem is that we generally do not have any central database or registry that actually has that information.
Tax filings and DMV records would be the two easiest ways, saying "its too hard to figure out where everyone lives" is a laughable excuse these days.
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I'm not saying it's easy, but there are lots of 'ordinary' people involved in politics.
Barack Obama was a one term senator who became president; before that he was a state senator, and a writer/professor. AOC was working in a restaurant and as a local organizer before running for congress.
Now, they are both obviously very charismatic and most importantly, prodigious fundraisers. But this idea that only people pre-selected by the party machine make it through is false.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Feinstein's deteriorating faculties could have been covered up in 2018. A PR team back then would have hidden Feinstein's private slip ups from the press so voters were only seeing the candidates at their best. Correct me if I'm wrong but Feinstein started repeating herself and forgetting vote outcomes around 2022.
What happens if a congressperson fails an evaluation? Are they ejected from power? Are the results made public?
I feel like this goes really gross places really quickly.
Someone or some group of someone needs to determine what tests / evaluation are given, and what criteria needs to be met for someone to be eligible for office.
And honestly, if someone with Downs runs on a platform of disability rights, or a veteran who suffered a TBI and runs on supporting the VA / injured soldiers should they be disqualified from office for those reasons? If they find the votes of people who want them to represent their interests I don't see any reason to disqualify them.
Then we can start getting into disorders like depression, anxiety, or addiction. Those can all have a bigger impact on someone's fitness in office than age. Keep in mind that homosexuality was classified in form or another as a mental disorder through DSM-5 in...2013. Even something like ADD or dyslexia can potentially make it difficult for a person to do their job in office.
Except you're talking about a bunch of people who probably can't vote easily because they're in college so they're not in the district they've got to plan ahead and get a ballot to mail out, which is at least easier to do than normal now because of Covid. And then that is an off year election that people are not as invested in, especially kids who are likely busy in college and/or living on their own for the first time.
Where ageism is relevant, it's the second, often underappreciated, form of ageism also relevant to this thread: ageism against the young. As I mentioned upthread, voter suppression against minorities also affects youth and that youth are more vulnerable to voter suppression efforts than adults. (I used to have a citation in my notes that showed that youth participation in elections was a strong proxy across countries for other minority enfranchisement, but I can't find it now. IIRC 'youth' was defined as ages 16-24, because Austria allows voting at 16.)
I admit that I can't conclusively prove right now that an electoral system that systematically advantages older voters and systematically disadvantages younger voters leads to similar advantages for older candidates and disadvantages for younger candidates, but it's pretty damn plausible.
The same strategies that help minorities vote also help youth: either abolishing voter ID laws or establishing a free national ID card, early voting, mail-in voting, more polling places, easier or automatic registration, work holidays on election day. These strategies can be implemented on the local and state level, and can be facilitated by volunteers & activists. Whereas an upper limit on age for national office would require a constitutional convention.
If you believe that the system is so broken that we can't meaningfully effect change via electoralism, then I sympathize. But calling for a reform that would require a constitutional convention is a non-starter in that game's ruleset. But let's not be fatalist, let's say that you could. What would it take?
You'd need to mobilize activists and voters anyway, who through the very nature of the issue are going to trend younger than the average voter. They'll need to be motivated by dissatisfaction with entrenched incumbents. If you can mobilize enough of them, and get them empowered enough, you can take on those incumbents directly.
This also means that from a matter of principle, you can protect democracy by expanding it, rather than restricting it. We should always be looking for opportunities to get more people involved in democratic processes, and to improve those processes to be more inclusive towards all people.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They test to ensure the person is not injured or disabled beyond an ability to properly communicate or care for themselves and understand their relationship with gravity.
It screens for dementia and strokes, not ASD or Down’s syndrome
It’s the kind of thing you want to have so you don’t get Feinstein situations
I think that's a more reasonable standard / expectation for people in office than a blanket Logans Run policy for the olds, but in my experience it's hard even for people suffering fairly serious cognitive decline to be determined incapable. Even when the person being made a ward is agreeable to it or wants it, the cases I've seen the courts are generally very reluctant to approve it outside serious and obvious cases.
It may or may not (probably would have IMO) screened out Feinstein, but it honestly feels like that is such an exceptional outlier of a case even among geriatric politicians that it seems like a lot for a pretty rare situation.
I would hope any case of an elected politician being examined for removal due to mental capacity would be an outlier, so I’m not sure that’s a sufficient reason to not employ such a safeguard
Barack was Chicago Dems, and he got that senate spot by not abusing Jeri Ryan. You see there was a good chance Barack wouldn’t get that senate seat because his Republican opponent was endorsed by the former Republican senator that was well liked. However less than 3 months before the general election that guy, Jack Ryan, had his divorce proceedings unsealed and his abuse of Jeri Ryan (yes 7 of 9) was bad enough that the republicans made him ditch the candidacy (ah simpler times) and then they brought in a carpet bagger from Maryland to try and stop Barack. Which failed. Again you didn’t choose this candidate, they did not show up organically. They showed up because of the large party systems driving all of this.
AOC happened due to the hubris of the Democratic party not thinking they needed to concentrate on defending against this upstart in a pretty much totally safe district, and she was an able master of internet celebrity in her initial candidacy. Again it wasn’t due to merit. It was due to a strategic failure in the back room dealings of the Democratic Party. Who’s done their best to make sure her situation doesn’t happen again.
The famously Democratic youth vote. In California. Is being suppressed - i.e. there's somebody out there actively trying to stop young voters from registering?
Voting is way easier and cheaper than getting tickets to the Eras tour and yet somehow...
edit: 18-24 is a big range and I don't think making excuses like "they're busy with college or living on their own for the first time" is really fair for a population who demonstrates the agency required to be busy in college or living on their own. Can I just say that we had two children by that age? I was holding down a job, helping raise two kids, and still voting. And sure it WAS the 90s so maybe voting has just gotten a lot harder since then! Citation needed...
If you think these systems are giving you a choice among all options instead of the options they let be possible you’re not paying attention to how it’s actually playing out.
Like one of the ways difi stayed in power is she just never acknowledged she had competitors for like decades. She wouldn’t engage them at all for debate or anything, and because the party and media engagement apparatus totally had her back it was very hard to know she was even getting primaried, and because it means being entirely oppositional to the entire Democratic Party machine very few people with any personal aspirations would risk taking her on, because it would basically mean being excommunicado from the Democratic Party after trying. Which is also why a bunch of her competitors have been not great, cause you gotta be kinda wacko to try and take that on.
Like everyone’s trying to say there should be no limits, anyone should be able to run let the electorate decide, but that’s not our reality. There are already massive systems of control over this and they are entirely undocumented and ungoverned. Writing down one rule that those control systems have to follow isn’t a big change to the availability of credibly running for the presidency. That’s already fully curtailed by mostly faceless organizations we have little if any direct control of. Acting like this isn’t where we live helps no one.
IIRC on this Democrats were unable to replace her with a proxy.
If she had retired/stepped down then they would have been able to replace her seat, which was what was bogging up confirmations for months.
We literally mail everyone a ballot weeks ahead, said ballot not even requiring a stamp.
The other facet is that candidates don't offer anything that young voters care about. The issues that rank highest with youth voters are ignored by the candidates
Forcing them out at 70 or whatever isn't just a matter of the infirmities of age. It's also just that frankly, it doesn't seem like they're going to let anyone else take the seat until the reaper takes them. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that even if they're still thinking clearly, there's an age past which people have no business running things, between not having to face the consequences, the tendency for mindsets to ossify as people age, etc. I'd also argue that a long time in power tends to invite corruption and such (and I'd also argue that clinging to power is a sign that they've been corrupted by it anyways, but).
Older congresspeople etc. should absolutely be identifying their replacements and making plans to step down, and it just doesn't seem to happen. So in effect, an age limit is in large part a proposal to force them to do that - by saying they can't just keep clinging on until they die.
I don't think it's good to focus entirely on declining cognition in old age as the sole reason to give them the boot - there's plenty of reasons beyond that to think the elderly shouldn't be in charge.
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This is an argument that age is not something youth voters care about. You're making my point for me.
That doesn't matter. If X, Y, Z are running for office, one of those options will reach office. It doesn't matter if none of them have mentioned Zork, Pogs (POGs? I can't remember. MUST BE MENTAL DECLINE!), or Alf; one of them will be the office-holder. Don't like X, Y or Z? RUN. There's usually some 20-something on the ballot up here for city council or the like; I mean they're usually a semi-literate dipshit or an absolute turdweasel libertarian, but they managed to figure it out, even if their campaign email is a fuckin' gmail address. Sometimes they're not a dipshit and they win!
But, lacking a non-X/Y/Z candidate, you pick the best/closest fit to your preferences from those running, then try to get them to care about your personal pet project. Maybe it's transit, maybe it's a pothole, maybe it's a dearth of payphones in the downtown core. Hell, maybe they're running for their own personal reasons, 'cause nobody cared about what they wanted. (It was Alf.)
I mean ...
Also, just to continue driving the point home here.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/2018-youth-voter-turnout-increased-every-state
California's awful youth voter participation in 2018 was a huge increase. Triple the number! Texas had a gigantic increase! From 8% to over 25%! And they're both still garbage both in absolute numbers and compared to other age groups.
This is an argument that voters don't want incapable people doing the job, not that they don't want old people doing it. It just isn't clear that age was a thing people cared much about in 2018 in California. She was 85 during that race!
Is this a uniquely American problem? The EU leaders I'm familiar with are old but not 70+
Ignoring the fact that gen-Xers are at least as bad.
And also that a lot of the youth that have extremely toxic beliefs.
Generally speaking, solving our problems via age limits world require an age limit of, like, 40. And an age minimum of 25.
I'm with Feral on this one - age limits are rife with problems and don't actually solve any of the underlying ones.
I think it's GenX voters getting squeezed out of top jobs who care about it.
And I'm not even necessarily against an 18yr term limit for SCOTUS where we start discarding the person sitting the longest, in favor of someone else we think can make it 18 years on the job. You could even do a thing where if you're replacing someone who died then that's your pick in the 2yr block, and nobody else leaves until the next one. This will of course heavily discourage retirement out of cycle and things could get really weird if say all the liberals retire at once.
Statistically speaking, all of our presidents have been freaks. They won a 46 out of a billion lottery.
https://www.theonion.com/july-20-1985-1819588637
Coincidentally, one of my open tabs was also from circle.tufts.edu. I had just closed it, so I fished it out of my browser history when I saw your link.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/state-state-youth-voter-turnout-data-and-impact-election-laws-2022
Regarding California specifically, CA does a lot of things right but what they don't do are automatic voter registration or voter registration through schools. CA has automatic voter registration when you get your driver's license but the number of teenagers getting drivers licenses has been in steady decline for years with only slight bumps here and there. As for voter registration through schools, California actually has a law mandating exactly that, but it's unenforced, unfunded, and ignored.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Not really sure. But it kind of feels like the same clique of wealthy and powerful individuals has been around my entire life without much change.
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Because the DNC threw away the apparatus that Obama used to motivate voters.
AOC motivated different voters and people to donate to her, but that required a lot of very local work done in an urban area where it's relatively easy to cover the entire district you're representing.
I disagree. Being required to work well into your twilight years to survive is a failure of our society. But some people like their work, and want to continue doing it. Lots of very successful actors continue working into old age, because they love what they do.
Limiting someone just because they passed an arbitrary number is either ageism or generationalism. I am perfectly ok with setting additional testing that must be done for older people to engage in dangerous activities, like driving or becoming President. I am not ok with saying "You hit arbitrary mark X, and must now retire." Boomers are already outnumbered by younger generations in the House, and that gap will only continue to widen as time continues its inexorable march forward.
As far as older people wielding the most power, that's an entirely unsurprising consequence of the fact that they've had more time to accumulate power. A professional politician who is 50 will have spent ~30 years accumulating power. At 80, that person will now have had 60 years.
The issues with the primary process and political party control are due to our first past the post voting system, not because our political leaders are old.
Would we be talking so much about his age? (As a reminder, he’s 82, a year older than Biden)
Do we think he would have voluntarily stepped down after a single term?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Yes
But how do you know someone is a citizen and living in the specific voting district. The problem is that we generally do not have any central database or registry that actually has that information.
Democratic primary isn't fptp, though. Candidates are awarded delegates proportionally based on vote share.
Though the winner in each state also gets bonus delegates, and then there's super delegates, so it ain't perfect.
And yeah, the media certainly doesn't help.
Tax filings and DMV records would be the two easiest ways, saying "its too hard to figure out where everyone lives" is a laughable excuse these days.