cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26024422
Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s former chief of staff, thinks the Democrats need a bolder vision.
I don’t have much hope in the voters. Last time a great challenger came along, Shahid Buttar in 2020, they still elected the geriatric choice. The DNC and Dem voters are the fucking worst. I mean, as long as you pretend the racist, fascist, ignorant, magats on the other side of the aisle don’t exist.
You would think that the Democrat’s consistent record of utter failure would count for something, but I think it has the opposite effect. The worse things get, the more insecure people feel. Insecurity makes voters risk-averse. Republicans capitalize on that with calls for a return to an American that never really existed. Democrats capitalize on it by making Democratic voters scared of new leadership.
I try to explain it with AIDS as an example. AIDS is a horrible disease, but it doesn’t kill you. It just sets you up to die from another opportunistic infection like pneumonia. The fascists are pneumonia, and the neoliberals are AIDS. It’s the fascism that kills you, but it’s the neoliberalism that was the underlying cause that should have been dealt with.
No matter, your view on her, it really is time to retire, she is 84.
I’d rather we judge on mental capacity and not on physical age (so that in theory wisdom is not lost), but there is something to be said for giving someone else a chance to drive the car.
The issue with lifelong politicians isn’t just their mental capacity but their lifelong detachment from reality as they live in a privileged bubble.
Wisdom can be written down, that would be more wise to do anyway.
Yes, but there is also Bernie. He is far more attached to reality than any young Republican in the Senate (or Democrat).
No one can argue with that, but the reason his name comes up every time is that he’s the exception, not the rule. His net worth is also a fraction of that of Pelosi’s or most of his political peers.
A ceiling on net worth for representatives is certainly an interesting concept, but not really relevant to the conversation.
It gets hard to show a correlation with time in service to detachment from reality when one of the longest serving members is the most grounded, and many of the youngest and most recent members are absolutely insane.
Even Pelosi is pretty progressive relative to the rest of the Democratic representation, and certainly of Congress as a whole. (Very feint praise given the field). She is certainly out of touch, but she was that way when she was far younger as well.
Undoubtedly. However, a Bernie who retired due to age or term limits, would still be able to mentor upcoming politicians. Handing the helm to a competent person and training their successors would be a much wiser strategy than what we currently got.
Why the hell should we keep creatures like Pelosi, who exist exclusively to suckle from the fetid teat of the stock market?
Oh, we should definitely get rid of Pelosi, but not because she aged out. The Pelosi of 30 years ago was just as worthy of dismissal.
And he’s acknowledged himself that he’s an anomaly in that regard.
No doubt he’s an exception, but where is evidence for the rule that would justify punishing the exception? When I think of out of touch Congress members, all the first names that come to mind are almost all among the youngest in Congress. Even Pelosi would never be on my short list if she wasn’t in leadership. (She is definitely out of touch, but she has some fierce competition). Also, all the older ones that I think of were just as bad or worse when they were younger.
Bernie is (unfortunately) a rare exception.
Then demonstrate the trend to me. I’ve given you an undeniable counter example. I agree that Congress is out of touch. Are the older Congress members more out of touch than MTG or the psycho tradwife Katie Britt? I don’t think so.
