794
Massive turnout at Democratic lawmakers’ town halls as Republicans hide from voters
(www.advocate.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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politics
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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.
You think everyone you disagree with to your left is a tankie.
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?
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.
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.
I'm sure you'll conveniently misunderstand this comment as well.
But Bernie is exempt right? Because he’s your guy? It’s always great when you people call yourselves out.
We’re done here.
Why would democrats be able to impose rules on someone outside of their party?
You have no problem with all the ancient democrats, right? Because they're your guys?
Yawn….
I'm glad that hearing about how your party is run by dusty old mummies with no credibility bores you. It means you hear it a lot, and you need to.
Naah, it’s not that. It’s that your argument bores me. Because it’s always the same thing- you build your straw man by editing everyone’s words to mean something they’re not at all saying, and then arrogantly pretend to have the upper hand whilst only achieving to prove the point of whoever you’re debating with. Frankly…
It’s getting old.
And If this conversation served any purpose, it was to show to anyone who happens to make it this far, that not only are your views on the subject very hypocritical, but that you’re also completely oblivious to it even when it is pointed out to you in plain sight.
To summarize:
According to you- age limits need to be placed on everyone but those that align with your ideology.
According to me- that’s some dangerous gatekeeping that is very reminiscent of someone else that is currently very popular today.
And having had the opportunity to interact with you here on several occasions, this seems to be a trend for you. Seemingly- the rules should apply only to others, but never you.
Again, this is very familiar behavior. I just can’t put my finger on who it reminds me of.
Now, go on and have your gotcha moment and bring up that I had said “we’re done here” in your obsessive need to have the last word. My experience with you has shown that there’s no possible outcome in which a conversation with you can end otherwise. And do be sure to accuse me of stalking you if I ever happen to respond to any comment you make within the next few days or so.
Cricket cricket
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but Gaza! I think I'll sit it out again to show them!
/s cuz apparently even dems online don't understand sarcasm