Summary
Rep. Annie Kuster, a 68-year-old Democrat from New Hampshire, retiring after 12 years in Congress, cites a desire to “set a better example” and create space for younger leaders.
Her decision comes amid growing public concern about aging politicians, with about a quarter of lawmakers over 70. Kuster’s successor will be Maggie Goodlander, 38.
Democrats are increasingly elevating younger leaders following setbacks in 2024, which some attribute to the perception of aging leadership, including President Biden’s controversial reelection bid.
Calls for age limits remain popular but face significant legislative hurdles.
Calls for age limits remain popular but face significant legislative hurdles.
They are our fucking employees. We should be able to choose the terms of their employment. Seems like a pretty fundamental tenant of a fucking democracy to me.
We should have made a provision for National referendum For things like this.
Well, we cannot even stop them from insider training. Then there is the problem of all the legalized bribery…I would think age limits faces much more of an uphill battle, even without the moral quandary it poses.
What moral quandary? No one but pedophiles complains about the fact that age minimums for certain activities exist. Cognitive function is a bell curve and old people are on the back end of it. That’s just a fact of life. What is controversial about it?
Well, with age also comes wisdom, so forcing people out when they might be hitting a stride is rather immoral (and foolish) if you ask me.
It’d be one thing if we were to start applying cognitive tests beyond a certain age…I’d hate to lose the likes of Bernie just based on a number. If someone is sharp and able-bodied well into their nineties or even later, what is the point in pushing them out?
But again, as I say, even this line of reasoning is rather static and fixed in time. This kind of discussion may age very badly if/when age extension/age reversal comes online, and I don’t want us setting something up that will likely come off extremely anachronistic just based on one of the last remaining prejudices that, at this point in time, is still permissible and even fashionable in polite company - and that is ageism. The rules of government are rather famous for not keeping up with the times and it seems foolhardy to try to put something into place that may very quickly become ridiculous.
With age comes wisdom, but at our politician’s ages, so do issues like dementia and Alzheimer’s
Possibly, but also maybe not. You have to treat people as individuals. That’s what cognitive testing would be good for, in any case.
Bernie is 83. He’ll be 89 when he most likely retires. I say as long as he is of sound mind and body, I want people like him in there. If he was forced out at some arbitrary cutoff, we would have missed out on decades of his input.
Not everyone ages equally.
The idea is that we choose every election.
We could have more choices if we replaced First past the post voting by passing state level electoral reform.
But then the Democrats would have to actually compete for your vote so that’s a hard pass.
We choose the person we don’t choose the terms.
We most often don’t choose the person either. The parties usually decide for us who is even allowed to run.
The parties usually decide for us who is even allowed to run.
It’s for the best, otherwise someone might run as a Democrat that doesn’t support their policies. /$
Which you choose when you vote in the primaries.
So, about that democratic presidential primary…
Biden won it. I don’t think an incumbent president has ever lost their primary when running for re-election, at least not in modern times when they actually had primaries that people could vote in. It’s on Biden for deciding to run again.
The parties get to decide who can run in the primaries
I used to think a candidate had to at least be a member of a party to run in its primaries, but Bernie corrected my misunderstanding.
Bernie joined the party. He had to in order to run as a Democrat. He later became independent again.
The problem is people like, “their,” geriatric. Ed Markey is my Senator, and he says he’ll be seeking reelection in two years when he’ll be 80. Even though I think he’s been a pretty good Senator, I want him to retire at the end of term, but I’m probably in the minority, and it will be an uphill battle to primary him if he doesn’t choose to step down.
They are our fucking employees.
Only in the same way your landlord or your bank is your employee. The positions have been monopolized by a handful of cartel brokers and the real job of administering is in the hands of corporate lackeys puffed up through billions of dollars in sales and marketing. Liberal democracy has been defanged by market forces.
We should have made a provision for National referendum For things like this.
There’s no such thing as a “national referendum”, legally speaking. We don’t vote on legislation, just on bureaucrats. And the bureaucrats we get to vote on are selected first by the donors, then by the party, and only finally by the general electorate.
Nobody we elect has any incentive to cap the age or number of terms they hold office. Why would they vote against their collective best interests?
It would still be age discrimination. The way to go is term limits.
If there can be a minimum age, there can be a maximum age.
How would it be age discrimination? There are plenty of fields where you are no longer able to work at a certain age such as being a pilot or air traffic control. If we can’t trust a 70 year old pilot to fly a couple hundred people then why the hell can we trust a 70 year old politican to steer the entire country with policy?
Flying a plane just isn’t analogous to being a politician though.
As in, if a politician has a heart attack or stroke it doesn’t put hundreds of lives at a grave and imminent risk.
Politicans still hold millions of lives in their hands. Sure, if they kick the bucket there can always be a replacement before any damage is done but they need to be cognizant enough to make decisions. They can’t be so old that they aren’t able to keep up and adapt to new things.
I absolutely agree, which is why we shouldn’t elect septuagenarians.
However, because there’s no imminent threat to life involved, laws precluding their election would probably be discriminatory.
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this. I don’t give a fuck if it hurts some old people’s feelings. If you’re over 65 you likely don’t have the mental capacity to run a country and make decisions daily that affect the lives of everyone in said country. It flat out should not be a possibility for someone to make policy when they won’t even be alive to see the consequences in 5-10 years. Even Bernie should not still be in congress, the man should be enjoying his retirement.
Again, I agree with everything you’ve just said, which is why we shouldn’t elect septuagenarians.
Making a law against old people holding office is a whole other thing though. Laws about who can stand is antithetical to democracy.
There is no age limit for pilots. As long as you pass the health checks you can keep flying.
https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-maximum-age-pilot-can-fly-airplane
You can keep flying, just not commercially after 65.
We can do an article V convention to amend the constitution with these limits in order to circumvent DC politics entirely. But they will tell you that it’s an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and could cost us democracy itself!…I say we go for it anyway.
Oh great, now the Democratic pols are going to step down to “set a good example” while their doddering GOP counterparts will lurch around until their 90s with, staffers following them around with portable defibrillators so if they die in hallway somewhere they can be revived before the next vote.
If that means the Democratic Party starts to transform by bringing in younger, more left people while the Republicans stagnate, this could be good.
“Best we can do is younger, neoliberal folks.” - Democratic Party
Well, where are all the people voting progressives in the primary?
Younger folk tend to be more adaptable and likely more in tune with actual working class issues. So more of a chance than before at least.
Well… I’ll be damned. You’ve changed my mind. Thanks.
So?
It’s a lot harder for their voters to excuse it when only one party does it. Which hurts them in elections.
And that’s not even getting into how those geriatric politicians are a disadvantage. They have to be physically present to vote. And the majority leader could actually try to do something every day.
Eventually enough would be missing that things could be accomplished.
There’s literally nothing stopping us from trying except the lack of effort from our politicians, so let’s get better ones and let the Republicans keep their ineffectual ones.
What’s the problem?
She’s set to be replaced by Maggie Goodlander, a 38-year-old Democrat who most recently worked in the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden.
I don’t really see any issue here.
It’s better than it sounds, she announced it like 9 months ago so there was a primary for the seat.
The article is paywalled but it makes it sound like she ran in 2024 and now someone is just getting the seat, which would have been bullshit.
There’s not really any issues at all here, and I can usually always find something to complain about.
The problem is that committee assignments are based on seniority, so if only one party has its long-serving Congresspeople step down, it cedes power to the other.
In other words, similar to how first-past-the-post elections lead to the two-party system, seniority rules leading to gerontocracy is a structural issue, not merely bad/incorrect/self-serving behavior on the part of individual politicians.
Edit: I’m not wrong, at least not completely. My argument just applies to the Senate, rather than all of Congress.
The problem is that committee assignments are based on seniority, so if only one party has its long-serving Congresspeople step down, it cedes power to the other.
Did you not hear about AOC losing the vote to head the oversight committee?
And that’s not getting into when seniority is important, it’s within the same party…
Quick edit:
Weird I just noticed both comments were yours.
You can only reply to me once and just wait a couple minutes for a reply, there’s no need to start the same conversation multiple times. It’s rather annoying to most people in fact
You can only reply to me once and just wait a couple minutes for a reply, there’s no need to start the same conversation multiple times. It’s rather annoying to most people in fact
Replies aren’t only for your benefit; other people read them too. I wrote the second reply because it was in a different branch of the thread and it’s possible people reading that branch wouldn’t see the first one.
If you thought you were helping, you could have googled it first instead of guessing, but feel free to reply as often as you want.
Fine, I googled it: seniority determining committee leadership is a Senate thing, but not a House thing.
It also might be that people in other professions would work longer if the structural issue of ageism was not so predominant there…about the only profession in the private sector where I see people doing it long past the average is doctors, but maybe that’s because they still have some labor protections as a profession, I don’t know…
The words smartest living physicist is like 94…
But he’s been “retired” for 30 years and his post work hobby has been figuring out what consciousness is.
Still insanely active and sharp as a tack. But it says a lot that he decided to retire from academia as soon as he was able.
about the only profession in the private sector where I see people doing it long past the average is doctors,
From what I remember is their pay was largely predicted on experience. With a “more is always better” approach because until recently living past 70 was a big exception. Thy also have the bonus of usually having very good healthcare, and knowing when to get checked out.
So there were multiple reasons doctors were one of the first professions people stuck in for a very long time. Another example would be lawyers, but for different reasons
My hope is that people that want to do what they find meaningful work are able to do it longer, if they so wish. Rather than working to lower all boats, such as those in public service, who currently work longer. I submit it’s because they actually can.
I probably sound like a broken record here, but if people try to set some kind of rule or norm on when people “should” exit the workplace, and along comes tech to slow down aging or even reverse it we are going to have to very quickly adapt to that.
I get that people get exasperated with people like Pelosi holding back all kinds of progress, while making all kinds of money by insider trading. However, I’m not sure it’s just an age thing - that seems like red herring. It should be about competency and removing corruption, but people talk about “term limits” and “gerontocracy” instead. If Bernie were all of a sudden able to live to 150 - I wouldn’t want some stupid notion of a “norm” or, worse, some backward age-related rule to keep him from continuing to do the job if he so wished.
In the short term, if people want to start applying some kind of independently-verified cognitive test and candidates for office start taking it, I’d be all for that.
[1] Not that I think anything like that will happen that quickly, but talking about AI was mostly a “fringe” discussion mostly, too. Until it wasn’t. And most of the population, given the reaction to things like GPTLLMs are not AGI, and maybe never will be. But they are and will be incredibly disruptive. I think any breakthroughs related to age might be similar - it’s considered very “fringe”, until it’s not.
As long as they keep putting in replacements that’s are younger, this is a good strategy. The problem would be if they lose their seats, but if it puts the GOP further out of touch with voters and pushes Democrats closer, I’m all for it.
It’s progress.
now the Democratic pols are going to step down to “set a good example”
Republicans used to do this as a party function. The idea of seats, particularly at the lower tiers of government, being term-limited and up-or-out helped create new opportunities for younger aspiring politicians to participate in the party and aspire towards higher office.
If your only way into the next rung of office is through a miserable primary against an entrenched incumbent or patiently waiting for a 70-year-old politician to die of old age, you’ve got very little reason to try and climb the ladder. But if you know each seat opens up every six to twelve years, and the line of aspiring politicians is forever moving forward, then there’s a reason to be a mid-level party official competing with other mid-level party officials looking for the next opening in the rooster.
Same thing happens in business with C-level executives. You have a bunch of hungry VPs all gunning for the next President/CEO job. Then you have your CEOs/Presidents retire onto the corporate boards every few years to make room for the next crop of talent. People want to join your company at the junior level because they see a path to seniority, rather than a dead-end role doing middle management bullshit for the rest of your life.
Yeah, I don’t understand why Democrats always think they must unilaterally disarm. It’s nauseating, honestly. How well did that work out for Al Franken, for example? We still have the orange pedo sitting in the WH here in a few weeks…
Reached for comment, Nancy Pelosi said “what an idiot, these are her prime grifting years!”
I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s not a lich, tbh
Time to elect a 72 year old replacement!
Thankfully, her replacement is 38.
The summary of this article is misleading, and I hit a paywall before being able to read the whole article.
She announced her retirement back in March 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/27/annie-kuster-retiring-house/ and did not run in the 2024 election.
This specific announcement is that one of the reasons is she is retiring is to allow younger folks a chance to lead.
I bet the private sector is more efficient at their systemic ageism. This will be interesting to see how this pans out if/when things like life extension/reversal come online.
The Dems are so fucking out of touch. The GOP will take advantage of this like they do with anything and everything else.
Edit: yay. Lemmy downvote dogpiles again. Do people not understand by my wording that I am criticizing both practices? The Dems are out of touch. Stepping down is the right move, but it will be taken advantage of by the GOP.
Why can’t this nuance exist without having to explain it to you like you’re 5 years old?
Downvotes dog piling? It’s three downvotes dude chill lol
Edit: at time of writing this it was only 3 downvotes, obviously.
Cool.
Yeah just like that. Much more chill.
Lemmy downvote dogpiles again.
Again?
Do you think the common element might be you, rather than “Lemmy”?
How are elderly politicians an advantage?
They have years of dirt and favors to cash in.
The 1% doesn’t need to spend more money purchasing a new politician.
They control all the important committees because they’re assigned by seniority.
Within the party.
If Dem have control a Republican can’t have seniority, the senior Dem on the committee does. Senior as in time on committee btw, not time in office.
Kuster has been in Congress for 12 years. She’s on three committees, and she ain’t leading shit.
They’re not. But understanding nuanced wording is.
Oh yes, the nuance of the GOP will take advantage of this is so nuanced
“bOth SiDes!!” Isn’t the nuanced take you seem to think it is.
Actually, that’s not what I said despite what you understood.
I can vote and support the Dems, which I do for the most part, without agreeing with them. The Dems can do better. How is that “Both sides?” Or are you saying that any criticism of them can’t be made? We lost this last election… do you think it’s because they did a great job?
You have yet to utter even a single word explaining how you think the GOP can use this to their advantage.
By staying in office until they’re piles of dusty bones, while Dems “step down to set a good example.” The fallacy of “both sides” in any of this is thinking that by doing the right thing that the GOP will also follow suit.
Better?
You understand that stepping down doesn’t leave that seat vacant for the 119th Congress, right? That
there’ll be a special election to replace hershe’s being replaced by a 38-year-old Democrat? What the fuck does this 68-year-old staying there have to offer versus someone younger?
Hey dude, I just wanted to let you know there is an option in your settings so you don’t see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn’t even show you your total upvotes (karma… whatever it’s called) by default either. None of these imaginary points fucking matter.
So why don’t you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad as fuck)
I agree that it is, but I do see dogpiling a lot. And as some kind soul thought to point out that I’m the common denominator, what they failed to note was that I’m also the common denominator of what I see… my own isn’t the only experience I pay attention to.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll leave them on. I’m not mad about the downvotes; the points don’t mean anything to me. I’m annoyed that for all intents and purposes, one cannot criticize the Dems from the left without having to explain every aspect of every syllable.
If the left are ever going to win or grow or get stronger than the GOP, which employs seriously underhanded tactics, we have to learn to identify our own misgivings. To do that, we have to get over self criticism and stop the knee-jerk reactions.
