politics @lemmy.world Sunshine (she/her) @lemmy.ca 1d ago

Massive turnout at Democratic lawmakers’ town halls as Republicans hide from voters

www.advocate.com Massive turnout at Democratic lawmakers’ town halls as Republicans hide from voters

The GOP struggles to defend the unpopular Trump administration’s policies.

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Good. Yell at them, too
- We need people telling at them, and we need people politely approaching them with the same policies.
  
  A game of good constituent/bad constituent, if you will.
- People probably won't need to yell at them if the Democrats actually are listening to and engaging with the voters.
  
  If democrats think that auction paddles are gonna solve this, they still need to be yelled at.
  
  Democrats do not listen to or engage with voters. The last time we told them to listen. their response was 'I'm speaking.'
  
  Let go of that crap now. Heckling and interrupting a speech was NOT the right thing to do. Neither was staying home on election day just because Harris didn't voice the exact right opinion on Gaza. We're in an infinitely worse situation now.
  
  If they engaged with their voters, we wouldn’t have any democratic representatives over age of 65. Anything past that is just posturing and self enrichment
  
  Edit: wow I left a generally agreeable comment and fucked off for the day and apparently a lot of people want representatives older than 65? Yet no one can say why that’s a good thing they only bring up Bernie who’s an independent and not a democrat. Some of you don’t know what you want other than to shit on people online and it’s laughable
  
  So… Bernie Sanders is posturing and out of touch?
  
  Cricket cricket
  
  If they engaged with their voters, we wouldn’t have any democratic representatives over age of 65.
  
  Bernie Sanders is not a democrat.
  
  I knew one of you would come along to move the goalposts.
  
  So now he's a democrat because it's convenient for you?
  
  Man you love telling others what they are saying, don’t you?
  
  Your entire comment history is you editing the words of others. I wonder why that is…..
  
  Hey, you wanted to disqualify Sanders from public service on the grounds that he is both old and a democrat.
  
  He's not a democrat. And he is neither posturing nor out of touch, largely as a result of not tying himself to a party with no credibility.
  
  Again, you really love telling others what they are saying, don’t you?
  
  Here you are, ironically trying to catch me one of your gotcha fails while not even acknowledging the hypocrisy of your argument that’s blindly in favor of the original statement:
  
  All democratic Representatives,
  
  Since you clearly have difficulty understanding things others say before you get your chance to rewrite their words for your little straw men…
  
  What I was implying- was that it must have meant that the age limit should be set for ONLY democratic representatives, yes?
  
  Which then it seems to go without saying, based on your poor ability to see what the argument even is- that one is to assume that the suggested age limit wouldn’t apply to only those you consider to be in your ring. It was very kind of you to remove all doubt from what would have normally been a suspicion.
  
  I don’t know… seems a bit hypocritical if you ask me. But I’m sure you’ll change everything I’ve said here to mean something entirely different.
  
  What I was implying- was that it must have meant that the age limit should be set for ONLY democratic representatives, yes?
  
  Yes. Considering how democrats have spent the past few decades fighting progressives and not republicans, the democratic party is run by inflexible old centrists whose only concern is enriching themselves. The party should implement an age limit. If republicans want to be run by idiotic old fossils, let them. It's to their detriment, as it has been to democrats' detriment. If anyone can be elected as an independent despite being old, more power to them.
  
  But I’m sure you’ll change everything I’ve said here to mean something entirely different.
  
  I'm sure you'll conveniently misunderstand this comment as well.
  
  What's with the ageism? I want Democratic representatives of any age, as long as they have the right policies and they are of sound mind. People over the age of 65 will be just fine with me, thanks.
  
  You gotta draw the line somewhere. Retirement age seems like as good a place as any.
  
  Why do you have to draw the line somewhere?
  
  I feel like a broken record here, but the huge uptick in ageism I see in relation to politics seems like it's not going to, ahem, age well given the amount of things I keep seeing about slowing down/reversing aging...
  
  I mean, yeah, it sounds kind of silly until it doesn't. I remember reading about/thinking about things like AI (even if it's not AGI - things like LLMs are here and disrupting the shit out of things). Same with self-driving cars. And yeah, neither of these things are perfect, but they are having an effect on society - people I know mostly got very smug and dismissive about these notions just 20 years ago. They are rather quiet about them now. I think the same thing is true about aging. Even if the breakthroughs are extremely mild and stay that way for decades, maybe even forever, suppose average healthspan is increased even 5 years. That will make (upper) age limits look very myopic and dated.
  
  It's not about how long you live so much as getting stuck in your ways. Old people don't learn new things and adapt the way young people do. Humans solidify the way they do things in their 20s, make some fine tuning in their 30s/40s, and then pretty much stick to those habits for the rest of their life. With the way technology is progressing we can't have stagnant people leading an evolving society.
  
  There are exceptions to every rule but that doesn't mean statistics aren't valuable information to base decisions on. Do you want people stuck in the past making laws about the future?
  
  I just don't understand this line of thinking at all. I don't want people to have their moral fiber evolve. Bernie has been right for decades now, as a for instance. I wouldn't want him cut out of politics based on some stupid and myopic ageist rule.
  
  Also, this line of thinking is what I'm pointing out is what is stuck in the past, by the way - I'm saying if we put into place some arbitrary age limits based on looking backwards, just as technology upends all this, that would be the fixed mode of thinking about humans, their capabilities as they age, and proper stewardship of the country.
  
  If people start having longer healthspans, I most definitely want people with the broader view to be running things, and that would mean people far older than they are right now, even. In that scenario, the older the better, in my view. In some cases, you have "old souls" among very young people who have the intelligence to talk to people that are older than them, or glean lessons from the past in other ways. This is often quite rare, unfortunately.
  
  Now, I would be in favor of having tests for capabilities, much like we have for older drivers in at least some states.
  
  Bernie is a great guy but that's an example proving the point I'm making. He's saying the same things he's said for decades. He's not wrong about most things but his stance isn't really evolving either. He's pretty revolutionary for someone in his age bracket but if you look at his peers he's pretty much the only one that you could say has a relatively modern view of politics, and even that is mostly because the US is so far behind the rest of the western world that his moderate positions seem more extreme by comparison. All the other old politicians saying the same things they've said for decades sound like living fossils, and that's not going to get better if they start living longer, it's going to get worse.
  
  Because mentally incompetent people shouldn't be in charge of steering the government. Mental competency drops fast at higher ages.
  
  Because I only want people who have a bested interest in the future to be the ones crafting it.
  
  You shouldn't be allowed to vote or drive after a specific age because you become a danger to people around you.
  
  Then you update the maximum age because the younger people can be convinced something’s changed instead of emailing Tim Cook about being locked out of their Facebook. This is a non argument using the slippery slope fallacy in place of facts
  
  I'm still just not understanding how being tech savvy relates at all to good stewardship of government?
  
  And I say that as someone that works in tech. I find this notion baffling. I know how to code, I know databases, I know the cloud, I know a lot about networking, and I've used a variety of operating systems and I've built and maintained things in lots of different paradigms and in different types of industries, and not only for browsers. People usually look to me for their tech support. So what? I wouldn't want me to be running the government, as not one bit of that matters to running government.
  
  Our leaders also know jack shit about a whole lot of engineering and technology specifics in a lot of other specific areas, not just computers, and regardless of their age. So what? When it comes to setting policy, they should be working with experts from the various specialties. If someone has to explain something like nuclear fusion to them like they are a fourth grader, that's how it has to be. I don't see how knowing anything about one vendor's specific product (such as Facebook) matters in the slightest.
  
  I'd much rather have people with the wisdom to realize that while a lot of various specifics about tech might change, that an awful lot of things stay the same, especially when it comes to matters of human nature and morality....and that wisdom usually comes with age.
  
  Lmao I find it hard to believe you work in tech based on your comments on ai. Now i see we’re just playing the pretend game where you can take one example and pretend it’s my whole point. Fucking good riddance homie I’m not trying to argue in bad faith with someone who clearly has no clue what they’re talking about
  
  So you’d be fine with a child holding the role? After all why draw a line. Age relates to capability on both ends.
  
  I hate that’d you’re downvoted and no response because this is the right take. We have age limits already but old people don’t want those to apply to them because … no reason they just want to continue holding power
  
  I'd be for tests of capabilities past some age. This would be the correct course of action, especially as technology may very well upend all these fixed and static notions about aging. Setting arbitrary upper age limits is kind of stupid even without that. We all have known people that have stayed quite sharp into very, very high ages, well beyond retirement age.
  
  The notion of a child holding the role is of course silly.
  
  Sure but let’s talk about realistic solutions though. Ideally all public servants would have to pass a civic test as well as a physical and mental acuity tests. That would eliminate people like mtg and trump from ever holding office (because ya know you gotta be at least literate to pass a test). However there is no precedent for what you’re proposing. It would require agreement on testing requirements, some independent agency to do said testing, a protocol for updating test content and most importantly trusting that the legislators will trust scientists and educators on what these tests should be. Current government would never do any of those things and at least there is a precedent for age limits. Yes in a perfect world it would be some form of test but in the real world we gotta look for solutions that might actually happen. Top end age restrictions have a precedent and would drastically improve the state of our governing body.
  
  Note: yes I understand that a 40-some year old mtg is magnitudes worse than even Bernie’s corpse at governing, that’s undeniable.
  
  So...you think that Congress is going to realistically pass some arbitrary upper age limit for the job?
  
  Sure but age limits are in place in a million different institutions. If it’s not ageism that you can’t run for office when you’re 16 then it’s not ageism when you have an age limit for representatives. My point is representatives should represent the general population and should be able to at least understand the issues of the current age. Meanwhile the aging congress struggles with basic internet understanding so we don’t have regulations that should have been standard since the fucking 90s. It’s 2025 a person who can’t comprehend internet basics like email encryption has 0 chance of making an informed choice on crypto currency or government backdoors and their implications.
  
  I want Democratic representatives of any age, as long as they have the right policies
  
  The party has selected against candidates with the right policies for decades. Any boomer democrat in party leadership isn't going to have the right policies.
- Yeah, but Gaza! I think I'll sit it out again to show them!
  
  /s cuz apparently even dems online don't understand sarcasm

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