The Democrats’ Corpse Caucus helps pass Trump’s budget.
I’m about at the point where if I could wave a magic wand and remove all the politicians that can still remember Vietnam from office I would. Temporary fix only, of course.
The main advantage of democracy as a form of government from a political science standpoint isn’t that it is fundamentally superior at achieving particular goals or assuring continuity in policy, but that if everyone feels they have some buy-in to decisions they are less inclined to want to overthrow the current order through violence or subversion than if they think they have no say in decisions. And of course, the main strategy of the GOP to create doubts in the minds of voters that the electoral process is fair and representative even as they strive to actually make it unfair and not representative through widespread partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and denial of election legitimacy when they lose.
Having just two functional parties with a fairly narrow and proscribed policy views contributes to a lot of exclusion, not only at the extremes of issues but also in ‘the middle’ whether neither party sees an advantage in championing an issue even if it is to the advantage of their constituents and broadly popular, i.e. health care and insurance reform. It is hilarious how so many Democrats sincerely wish that Liz Warren would shut the fuck up about pharmaceutical prices, and stood back to watch cryptocurrency interests eviscerate Katie Porter’s Senate primary challenge with a bunch of astroturfing bullshit because they were both deviating from the party norms, but stood lockstep with Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though she polled as broadly unpopular outside of the traditional Democratic base.
Age limits are a pretty arbitrary metric of acuity, and certainly no assurance that an officeholder below any particular threshold will be focused and interested in serving their constituents. Removing the direct influence of corporate funding and ‘dark money’ in campaign finance, term limits (at least assuring that a politician will have to switch jobs and convince a different demographic that they are working in the public interest), and most critically taking rational measures to assure that politicians are not using their office for personal financial gain for themselves and close family members, which is one issue that is clearly bipartisan because it applies equally to Nancy Pelosi as it does Mitch McConnell.
If those advantages and incentives for incumbency are better regulated it at least removes the perverse incentives to cling onto power to the last breath, and just maybe encourages more senior politicians to mentor and promote junior ones through the party structure instead of inevitably fighting new ideas and fresh blood. But frankly, while the Democratic party isn’t the kind of authoritarian-promoting ideological monolith that the GOP is, it has contributed to the ossification, erosion of support for even the ideas of civil rights, and rejection of change even when necessary and beneficial. Filtering out the too-comfortable elders might clear away the cobwebs but it won’t rebuild that house to withstand changing political and social conditions, nor to truly embrace a larger smorgasbord of ideas and viewpoints.
Stranger
While this is true, and I also agree with your points below, I do think that our culture would be healthier overall if we had some firmer limits on employment, and if there were more of a supporting role for elders, as the voice of experience, and less pressure on them to work. But that’s a very long way from where we are now.
You don’t need to convince all the voters, just ~5% of the voters need to show up and vote for a better democrat in the primary to get a better democrat elected in safe blue districts. Turnout in primaries is less than 10% many times.
AOC is the representative from NY-14th district. I’m just using her as an example. In 2018, there were roughly 450,000 people who were eligible to vote in that district.
Of those 450,000, around 16,898 voted for AOC in the 2018 primary and 12,880 voted for Crowley (the incumbent to that seat). In the 2018 general election, AOC won 110,318. In the primary in a heavily democratic district, about 7% of voters bothered to show up to vote in the primary.
Meanwhile about 25% of eligible voters voted for her in the general in 2018 (midterm turnout is lower) and 152k showed up to vote for her in the 2020 general election.
You don’t need all the voters to show up to pick a better democrat. Only 4% of eligible voters in NY-14th district was all it took to elect AOC in the primary. It took 16,898 democrats to pick AOC as the primary winner, and then AOC went on to win 110 to 152k votes in the general election.
Not that I consider AOC a good example. She and Bernie are kind of what I meant by ‘progressives who do nothing but give speeches’. Not that they have any power to do anything, but still.
Re: “In safe blue districts” — what percentage of the seats are “safe”? I don’t think my own district is “safe,” though it’s usually Democratic.
I don’t know what the cufoff for ‘safe’ is, but for example AOC comes from a D+19 district, which is extremely safe.
I would guess ‘safe’ means D+6 or more, since that index considers anything between R+5 and D+5 to be a swing district. There are 156 house seats that are D+6 or more. There are 181 house seats that are R+6 or more. That means there are about 98 swing districts where it is best to focus on electability above everything else.
There are also 14 states with a D+6 or more lean, including NY state (where Schumer is from) which is D+8
Some people like to work, especially in public service. There is certainly an argument for not allowing people to hold onto positions for decades in a way that denies opportunities for advancement for younger generations (which is a huge problem in academia) but I think putting age-based “firmer limits on employment” is not the best way to achieve that. And as for age as a metric, I’d put Liz Warren up against many politicians half her age.
But I would agree that we need some system that holds politicians and their functionaries accountable when it is clear that they are declining mentally and lack the faculties to translate their wisdom into effective policy, and I don’t think that should just apply to people over a certain age, either; it is pretty clear than John Fetterman is not mentally well or emotionally stable. I don’t know how you create a mechanism to address that which can’t be abused by a malicious actor to persecute opponents for perceived or manufactured infirmities but it is clear that expecting ‘elder statesmen’ to police themselves in this regard does not work.
Stranger
Ah, what Stranger said.
“What is to be done?” remains a big question.
(I take the question from Cherneshevsky and Tolstoy, not Lenin.)
I may have been wrong about my earlier statement that the GOP could only lose 2 votes if there were 215 democrats.
If they had 220 seats and the dems had 215 seats, then if 4 republicans abstained or just voted present, then it would only take 216 republicans to pass a bill over 215 democrats.
The issue is would those 2 republicans who voted no on this bill have voted present or abstained instead of voted no in that scenario.
They got theirs, Jack! They ain’t givin’ it up. Fuck everyone else.
Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.