Selfish, elderly democratic politicians are really pissing me off

The BBQ Pit
1

What brought this thread about was the vote in the house for the Trump budget which will, among other things, cut medicad enrollment by millions. I heard that the GOP can lose 4 votes and still pass the bill. I thought ‘that can’t be right, I thought the GOP only has a 4 vote majority in the house and could only lose 2 votes and still pass a bill’.

Apparently what happened was after some GOP members got pulled to work in the Trump admin, the votes in the House were 218 GOP vs 215 democrat. meaning the GOP could only lose 1 vote and still pass a bill. So what happened in the last few months?

2 vacant seats held by the GOP had elections, and the GOP won those seats. So now the GOP has 220 seats.

But, and this is important, three elderly democratic members of the house have died. All three come from districts that are safe blue seats.

  • Raúl Grijalva; Arizona’s 7th Congressional District; died March 13, 2025; Cook PVI D+17

  • Sylvester Turner; Texas’s 18th Congressional District; died March 5th; Cook PVI D+20

  • Gerry Connolly; Virginia’s 11th Congressional District; died May 21, 2025; Cook PVI D+16

So now the democrats only have 212 seats. The special elections to elect new members in these safe blue seats aren’t until July, August, and possibly November for the 3rd seat.

Here is another thing that sucks. All 3 were diagnosed with cancer before they were elected in Nov of 2024.

In November 2022, Turner disclosed that during the summer he had been diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer,[91] for which he had surgery and received six weeks of radiation treatment.[92]

On April 2, 2024, Grijalva announced that he had been diagnosed with unspecified cancer initially diagnosed as pneumonia (but which he later announced to be lung cancer),[171] and was beginning a “vigorous course of treatment”.[172][173][174][175] Prior to his diagnosis, Grijalva was a heavy cigarette smoker.[176] On March 13, 2025, Grijalva died in Tucson from complications of cancer treatment, at the age of 77.[177][175][178]

In November 2024, shortly after being reelected, Connolly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer after experiencing slight stomach pain.[103] He said he planned to undergo chemotherapy and immunotherapy.[103] In April 2025, he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would be retiring at the end of his term.[104] He died at his Fairfax County home on May 21, 2025.[105][3]

This is a real problem. Biden holds onto the presidency despite his mental acuity declining rapidly. Instead of having an open primary the powers that be just anoint Harris, who didn’t do well in the 2020 primary. I don’t know if someone else would’ve done better in the general if we’d had an open primary, but still. Biden’s refusal to give up his power and prestige hurt us.

Feinstein died in office with dementia.

If there are massive cuts to medicaid under the new Trump bill, part of the responsibility goes to the 3 democrats who ran for reelection in their 70s despite knowing they had serious forms of cancer.

So now instead of the GOP only being able to lose 2 seats and pass a bill, they can now lose 4 seats and pass a bill in the house. There is already some pushback against Trump’s budget bill among republicans due to cuts to medicaid and the SALT deductions. The difference between 2 GOP no votes and 4 GOP no votes could be huge on this.

Never even minding Schumer saying he’d vote against the GOP funding bill back in march, making a big speech on the senate floor saying he’d vote against it, then literally one day later he votes for it.

Then David Hogg talks about funding primaries for useless, self centered democrats in safe blue districts (I donated to his efforts for this) and the entire democratic party turns on him.

This is a real problem. We’re dealing with fascism and we have a party full of useless, elderly, sick people only concerned with their own power and wealth.

2

Ruth Bader Ginsberg Syndrome is real. Party-wide infection.

3

I didn’t even think about her. Thank goodness Breyer came to his senses.

People on this board got so mad at me when I was pissed at ‘notorious RBG’ when she died. She was just as selfish. I predicted we’d lose roe due to her selfishness, and we did.

4

This is a long standing problem with the DNC which has opposed campaign finance reform at least as energetically as the GOP, resisted and often actively suppressed progressive candidates over party stalwarts, turned away from its base of labor and underrepresented minorities toward corporate backers, and generally stood for an increasingly right-leaning status quo despite all of the performative criticism over how “woke” they are as a party. That they are run by increasingly elderly senior leaders who are (or at least give the appearance of) more devoted to enriching themselves and consolidating power than serving their constituents is just another indictment—if indeed it is needed—of a “two party system” that gives the voters a choice between the “Shit and the Shit-Lite parties” (with apologies to Juice Media from whom I borrowed that description), and in which Democrats rail against anyone who advocates on behalf of or votes for an ‘alternative’ candidate.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was (quite reasonably) concerned that leaving a vacancy would result in either Republicans holding up a nomination in committee they way they did with Merrick Garland, never even allowing a hearing and confirmation vote, or that Democrats would compromise and pick a substantially more conservative candidate for a nominee. Ginsberg would have had to retire before 2015, as the 114th Congress had a GOP majority in the Senate, and even before that because the Democrats never had enough votes to for cloture without four or more Republicans crossing party lines. So, you can be “pissed at ‘notorious RBG’” but frankly there really weren’t better options than to hang on, and regardless Roe v. Wade was already being eroded and was going to fall anyway; if you want to be angry at someone over that your frustration is better directed at two generations of legislators who didn’t bother codifying the interpretation of Roe into federal law, or better yet a Constitutional amendment.

Stranger

5

But Ginsburg had already been warned numerous times in 2013 and before. She had her chance then and there and still wouldn’t retire. That was when Obama was still in power and the Senate was still blue.

6

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/rbg-retirement-obama.html

Obama tried to get her to step down in 2013. Democrats had 55 senators at the time and could’ve used the nuclear option like they had already done with district judges and appellate judges to elect a Supreme Court judge with 50 votes + the VP as tie breaker.

And the GOP got rid of the 50 vote supreme court threshold under trump anyway.

Merrick garland happened in 2016, when democrats had 46 senate seats.

We lost Roe 5-4

7

Sure, but would rolling the dice on a Republican blockage or Democrat compromise on a more conservative (but still Democrat) Justice have been worse than Amy Coney Barrett?

I mean, if there was any question that she might die during Trump’s term, retirement and rolling the dice was always the better choice, even if it didn’t work out optimally. She was eighty seven when she died; it’s not like she was a relatively fresh-faced 70 or so, and died suddenly.

This sounds like a “We need more Progressive candidates” appeal. I’m not sure that’s the actual problem or the solution to that particular problem.

The larger problem is that the Democratic party seems to be completely bereft of leadership, and as a result, doesn’t seem to have a coherent direction. That plays right into geezer congresspeople staying in office far past their sell-by dates.

Wouldn’t that money be better spent challenging Republicans somewhere? That’s why everyone turned on Hogg- right now, Democrats who are in safe districts aren’t nearly the problem that Democrats in vulnerable districts are, nor are they the opportunity that Republicans in vulnerable districts represent. But Hogg thinks because they’re not pro gun-control or whatever, that it’s a good use of money to try and primary them out of office.

8

The 112th Congress (2011-13) was barely blue and that included a couple of ‘Blue Dog’-type Democrats. Frankly, it was kind of a miracle that Obama managed to get Kagan through the confirmation process even though Antonin Scalia, of all people, recommended her. That at one point, Neil Gorsuch was actually on Obama’s short list of candidates for nomination (I forget if it was for the nomination that ended up going to Kagan or Sotomayer) shows the level of concern that the Supreme Court would skew rightward under the pressure to get enough votes. And to be frank, Ginsberg was mentally sharp and persuasive basically up to 2020. If she had bailed a decade or more prior, what would Supreme Court decisions have looked like in that interval?

I mean, we were going to get a religious extremist anyway because Trump needed to demonstrate his support for his Fundamentalist Christian supporters; whether it was for Ginsberg or Kennedy, that was going to happen. And even if Obama had managed to ensconce a firmly resolute centrist replacement for Ginsberg, the current court would still have a conservative majority and almost certainly Roe v. Wade being overturned. Ginsberg not retiring earlier is not the history-changing decision that people want to believe it was. Also, I just kind of feel bad for Sotomayer, Kagan, and especially Jackson (who endured a clown circus of a nomination hearing with grace and patience for all manner of stupidity and partisan fuckery) because they now basically have no role on any politically partisan decisions except to dissent. If there was another more ‘liberal’ (i.e. not far right) justice they would still be sitting in the same boat.

Stranger

9

I don’t know if more progressivism is the solution. My understanding is when you break voters up into groups, only about 20-25% of voters consider themselves progressives/liberals. Thats roughly half the democratic party, but the other half of democrats are not progressives.

What the democrat party needs is competent, pragmatic fighters. I’d take a competent, pragmatic fighter who is a moderate democrat and knows how to get stuff done, and how to block bad legislation, over a useless progressive who does nothing other than give speeches.

Harris raised over a billion dollars in 3 months and still lost, accomplishing nothings. Hogg is talking about 20 million.

AOC spent $200,000 on her primary against Crowley in the 2018 primary for NY-14th district. 20 million can go quite a way in primaries.

Also what Hogg is doing does make sense, because it makes democrats realize they have to actually represent their voters if they want to avoid a primary. Democratic politicians are going to feel more motivated to listen to their voters and fight for what their voters want if they face a primary if they fail.

Democrats in safe blue districts and states need to be afraid of losing their seat in a primary if all they do is give up without a fight. Now that Schumer knows he may lose a primary, he may think twice before giving a speech about how he is going to fight before giving up in a day. Or other democrats will learn from his mistakes.

We don’t just need more democrats, we need better democrats than Schumer, Jeffries, Ginsberg, and all the moderate dems in safe blue districts that have been primaried in the last ~6 years.

10

So it’s more of a longer-term attempt to instill/enforce some kind of party discipline? That I can get behind; there should be no reason that entrenched assholes like Schumer ought to be allowed to derail large bills singlehandedly. And if it takes funding primary challenges to him and his ilk, that’s fine.

I was reading it more as an ideological purity sort of thing, and thinking that was an astoundingly atrocious idea.

11

Its more about the fact that democrats have learned to give up without a fight, and the ones who do that need to be afraid to lose their seats. Also elderly, sick democrats holding onto power is a serious problem that has fucked the democrats heavily in the last ten years or so. Primaries are a good way to get rid of those democrats.

Having said that, if you have a deep blue district with a cook index of +5 or more in favor of the democrats, I’d rather a moderate be replaced with a further left democrat. Whats important though is that the democrats fight competently. I’d rather have a competent, effective moderate democrat than a progressive who does nothing but give speeches. However a progressive who is also competent would be nice.

12

While I’m sure having those three who died in office earlier this year wouldn’t have stopped that omnibus that just passed, it would have at least made it closer with the possibility of a defection or two to stop it. Every open seat caused by the death of some sick, elderly politician who knew he was sick and elderly when he ran for re-election deserves to be damned in memory. They have helped destroy any good they might have done in the past.

13

The bill passed the house 215-214. There are 432 current members of the house since 3 democrats have died.

  • 215 republicans voted yes
  • 212 democrats voted no
  • 2 republicans voted no
  • 2 republicans did not vote
  • 1 republican voted present

Its entirely possible, and totally likely, that if the 3 democrats who died in office in the last 4 months had still been alive, the bill would’ve still passed. But If those 3 democrats had lived, it would’ve been 215 democrats voting against this bill, not just 212 democrats voting against it. That means the GOP would’ve had to get 218 votes to pass the bill.

The GOP lost 5 votes on this bill, if the 3 democrats who knew they had serious cancer before running for re-election had been alive, the GOP could’ve only lost 2 votes and still passed the bill.

14

It’s worth asking why people cling to these jobs when elderly and, in these cases, ill.

As I understand it, the current system rewards incumbents with extra power due to their seniority. Incumbents thus have advantage not only in name recognition at the polls with an ill-informed electorate, but also that an incumbent will wield more actual power for North New Virginiana than their replacement would.

Changing this would require a more equitable distribution of power shared among the members of Congress. I don’t see that happening—equity is hardly a Democratic value, and it’s certainly not a Republican one.

So the problem is, how do you get voters to choose new and not powerful over old and powerful? Gambling that the elderly cancer patient won’t die, and that their staff can manage things while wheeling the body back and forth, is not actually unreasonable in this system.

15

Term limits! For House, Senate, and SC. We already have it for the Exec branch. Not sure why we don’t for Legislative and Judicial.

16

It is the same issue as campaign finance reform; the people who would impose these restrictions are also those who would be impacted by them.

Stranger

17

Sad but true. Both of those items would go a lonnnggg way to improving politics in the US. While we’re at it, get rid of the shitty Electoral College too.

I’m going to be on a search for a magic lantern! Those are my three wishes.

18

And this may be part of the reason so many people don’t vote: their experience is the system does not and will not work for them.

19

We could also impose age limits. I am more in favor of term limits than I used to be, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to cut people off at age 75. There are still ways to contribute after that if you’re still inclined to work. I know some 75-year-olds are supremely capable of working full time, but even they deserve retirement.

20

70, even.